Tiny Buddha

Category: letting go

  • Acceptance Is Not Passive; It’s the Path to Peace

    Acceptance Is Not Passive; It’s the Path to Peace

    “The price of our vitality is the sum of all of our fears.” ~David Whyte

    Acceptance by its very nature is imperfect; it’s messy and often unpleasant, while ultimately leading to a place of growth, a sense of freedom, and a life familiar with ease. I know this because I have had a lot of painful acceptance in my life, and it has been crucial to helping me move beyond the stuckness of fear and suffering.

    Years ago, being the natural striving, fun-seeking, achievement-oriented person I was, I ignored the fact that my body felt like a truck had run over it. I pushed, faked, and hid what my body was really feeling… until it all came to a screeching halt.

    Diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease, and a future of chronic pain or worse, I had to give up the impressive job, the active social life, and the self-image that had all propped me up in the world.  And then what was left?

    Instinctively, I wanted to go back to the way things were, to repatch it all back together again.  Fortunately, I inherently felt the impossibility of all of that, and so the work began.

    I started taking a meditation class and then a Buddhist practice, and one day sitting silently, feeling my body breathing, listening inwardly to what was there, the hard, guarding shell around my heart broke.  I had to accept there was no going back to normal, there was only being with what is and opening to where that might lead.

    Acceptance is not resignation. It is not passively giving up. It takes courage and strength.

    I feel it more of a falling inward, dropping into the sensations of what is, recognizing and acknowledging what’s there. A place of empowerment and choice instead of feeling like a victim to chance. It is a beautiful sense of coming home to the body in the present moment, a feeling of wholeness and strength to better face your circumstances, whatever they may be.

    That being said, there were a lot of tears and a lot of pain; in other words, it was messy. A series of small steps, it took a while.

    I had to accept that I could no longer keep up with my carefree, energetic friends as they traveled around the world and partied around the clock.

    I had to accept I would no longer create interesting buildings as an architect or participate in gallery shows as an artist.

    Most difficult of all, I had to accept that I could no longer be the fun-loving, happy person my husband needed—at least not right away.

    I had to accept my life had suddenly taken a new direction and be receptive to the possible changes that this might bring. Receptivity was the key to opening toward inner growth and inner intimacy, as well as a place of gentleness, all new territory for me!

    So what is your experience of acceptance really like? Maybe there is an image or metaphor that best viscerally says “acceptance” to you. To me, it feels like a slow-motion fall into an undercurrent that sweeps me away.

    It can feel quite beautifully poetic as a surrender into what is present, which floods me with a feeling of relief. It is more honest, more pure, less tinged with the shoulds of daily life—as in the pressure to be more productive, to be energetically outgoing, to follow through on all of my perceived responsibilities as a daughter, a wife, a friend.

    Allowing myself to actually be the way I felt, without the weight of someone else’s expectations, was the beginning of moving toward physical and emotional health.

    Rilke writes, “Gravity is like an ocean current that takes hold of even the strangest thing and pulls it toward the earth. We need to patiently trust our heaviness—even a bird must do this before it can fly.”  

    Trusting that the earth will support all of our weight, all of our heaviness, the physical pain and the mental anguish too, brings us to a place of feeling grounded, a place that’s ready to respond with wisdom and compassion, though this does take practice.

    Pulling away from our pain or ignoring a life difficulty is a kind of resistance, a fighting of gravity, and an easy habit that will not heal our difficulties.

    This tiring cycle of the push and pull of resistance makes everything difficult and takes a lot of energy, draining you of anything positive. It’s exhaustive like continuously having a really bad day.

    Resisting that all aspects of my life had changed made the changes much more emotionally painful.  Stuck in this place of denial, I was unable to connect in the ways that nurture deep friendships and that create authentic appreciation for life’s small pleasures.

    Recognizing the inner discomfort, it’s worth asking, “What am I resisting?” And even better “Do I want to be in acceptance mode or resistance drain?” And finally, “What is it that I need to accept?”

    We all hold onto some kind of emotional pain by pushing it away in an effort not to be hurt, which ultimately and ironically keeps this pain very close. But what would it take to let it go? What is it that wants to be acknowledged and ultimately accepted?

    And this pain, whether physical or emotional, leads to tight muscles and tight mental habits, a pattern of tenseness, a pattern of protectiveness that sucks the joy and spontaneity out of your life. Again, not much fun, not much pleasure. Trying harder and harder, like pulling on a necklace or shoestring that is knotted, will only make things worse.

    Embracing life, not just the edited parts of it but all of it, is a place of wisdom and grace. I can find this place sometimes in movement or in meditation, and often these are the same, because as quiet as your body/mind can get in meditation, at all times it is gently moving with every breath. This is the movement that grounds your learning into the very tissues and neurons that make you tick.

    If you can find your learning in the body, feel it in the body, you will not forget your experience or the glimpses of insight just discovered. The dancer Augusta Moore once told me “The breath is the music in the body.” I love this—the dance of life unfolding with each breath.

    So why do we try to hold on so tightly to what was, even though it creates nothing but frustration and pain?

    Once we find the means, whatever this might look like, it feels so damn good to drop the efforting, to accept, to fall apart a little, or perhaps a lot, and then move on, move forward with our new reality and all it has to offer. It can feel so good to allow this deep relaxing in the body, find that place of peace and feeling of liberation.

    And embracing life is what it is all about. We want to respond whole-heartedly, not with dullness or avoidance or anger. The danger lies in blocking too much of our self, guarding against the pain, the fears, or sense of being trapped in denial.

    Staying true to our entire experience allows us to loosen our responses, drop the guard, and be in a place of acceptance. As David Whyte writes, “The price of our vitality is the sum of all of our fears.”

    I have heard it said, and reluctantly have felt this truth, that the body cannot lie. So I invite you to find a quiet moment and listen deeply to what it is your body really wants to tell you, the inner wisdom it wants to share in healing; whether it’s an illness that has taken you down or a broken relationship that feels like it has left you stranded, your body/mind knows how to heal, and acceptance is the key to opening that door.

    With an open heart and a willing mind, really hear what your strongest ally, your body, wants you to know: that this partnership, between the mind and the body is a strong one, it is a relationship that will guide the winds of change with grace and ease. Acceptance helped me learn to listen within, and then trust what I heard, trust just what my personal world was asking me to respond to, and step peacefully forward into that vibrant flow of life.  

  • The Art of Slow Living: How to Reclaim Your Peace and Joy

    The Art of Slow Living: How to Reclaim Your Peace and Joy

    “In today’s rush, we all think too much, seek too much, want too much and forget about the joy of just being.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    We’re going to start with a visualization exercise. Set a timer for one minute, close your eyes, and reflect on your happiest childhood memories…

    I was born into a family of wanderers, individuals who held a deeply rooted love of travel, and an even deeper sense of adventure. My happiest childhood memories are the times when we packed up our suitcases and hit the road (or the sky or the sea).

    In the quiet stillness of my mind, I float away to a Hawaiian beach. Suddenly, I am once again a young adolescent lying in the sand with the ones I love as we watch the leaves of a large palm tree sway overhead, moving in front of the sun and casting long, warm shadows on the seemingly endless stretches of beach on either side of us. The crash of the waves reverberates through our ears, and a sense of peaceful stillness permeates our entire beings.

    Here, we have no responsibilities, and our attention is simply focused on being present with one another.

    Maybe for you, the happiest childhood memories that come to mind revolve around a favorite holiday when friends or loved ones laughed together without distractions, or spending time with brothers and sisters talking about everything and nothing, growing closer to one another.

    No matter the memories that come to mind, they undoubtedly had one thing in common—in those moments we (and those around us) were free.

    That’s the secret to intentional, or slow, living; when we practice patience with ourselves and others, and allow the busyness of our lives to fall away, we can feel the emotion that exists in every moment, and truly connect to the people and things around us.

    Childhood is, by its very definition, an opportunity to practice slow living. When we are children we do not have the stress of our jobs, our social status, or providing for others weighing on our shoulders. Not only are our days free from responsibility, they are also free from anxiety and worry.

    As we age, we have a tendency to forget the purpose of intentional living, and instead allow our days to be managed and monitored by the incessant beeping or text and email alerts and the allure of amassing social media likes.

    We allow our souls to be turned away from spiritual clarity and light, believing instead that the more “stuff” we allow to fill our days, the happier we will be.

    But the truth, friends, is that the happiness we so desperately seek on our busiest days is not found in the countless distractions of the world around us, but in the innocence of our hearts—the stillness and presence that has dwelled within us since we were children.

    Of course, I’m not recommending that you quit your job tomorrow, forgo all of your responsibilities, and craft some sort of bubble-like lifestyle for your days.

    I am suggesting that you evaluate where your priorities lie, and if you find your life has become too fast-paced to truly connect with yourself and others, that you take small action steps toward decluttering your spiritual core—the part of you that knows the answers to life’s greatest mysteries do not lie in the rush, but rather, in the moments of connection.

    Living intentionally is an art, and is not something that we can master overnight, but by committing to a practice of cultivation, we can encourage relaxation of our nervous systems, begin to avoid the people and things that take our time and energy without giving us anything in return, and create a life we love—a life that is full of peace and genuine joy. Here’s how to get started:

    Evaluate your life.

    What do you truly want out of your life? If there were no barriers like money or power, what would you want to do and with whom would you want to do it? Consider the answers to these questions to be your sense of inner wisdom and trust the messages you receive.

    Identify the people and activities that you desire to willingly surround yourself with, as well as those to whom you feel obligated, and notice how you feel when you think about these people and tasks, responding to your thoughts without judgment. Then, work on increasing the amount of time you spend doing what you love with those you love.

    Little by little, you will find that you are able to take control of your life and live in a way that fulfills you, allowing you to practice intentional presence in all areas.

    Understand that busyness does not equal importance.

    Answering all the emails in our inboxes while we sit at the dinner table is not going to mean anything to the people who mean the most to us. While many responsibilities are unavoidable, there is something to be said for committing to presence of mind, no matter how much we may struggle with feeling like we’re missing out on something that only our devices can tell us about.

    Generations ago, when professionals did not have electronic tools like cell phones or tablets, they somehow managed to complete all of their tasks and were considered by others as having contributed to society.

    Somewhere along the way, that understanding became skewed, and now, we have lofty expectations for how quickly we can respond to a summons and the number of commitments we can successfully juggle at one time.

    Understand that being busy does not make us successful or important; in fact, often, being too busy serves no purpose other than to detract from our connection with the people that are nearest to us.

    Choose a place in your home where you will stow your cell phone and other electronics upon entering the house. When our phones are out of reach, they will almost automatically leave our minds, and we can focus on being present with the people who are physically with us.

    If you find that spending all your time at home without your phone is too difficult or not reasonable for your lifestyle, establish small blocks of time (five to ten minutes maximum) that you are allowed to check your phone before re-stowing and returning your attention to the present. Over time, you will find that your need to have these phone breaks becomes less and less frequent.

    Find silence.

    Our world is noisy—there is no other way to describe it. Yet, we’ve become so accustomed to the din of our environment that we have seemingly become immune to noticing how this constant chaos negatively impacts us physically and spiritually.

    When was the last time you spent a moment in silence? It’s probably been quite some time, if you can even remember a moment free from noise at all. Our culture perpetuates trepidation around quiet, wanting to fill every pause with some sort of sound effect or reverie, so it’s important for us, as we pursue a slower lifestyle, to create a space in our lives that is free from distractions.

    Find a way to bring calm and quiet into your life whether it comes through a daily practice of meditation, a walk through the silence of nature, or a peaceful moment spent in bed before you close your eyes to rest. Pursuing peace will lead to a regular commitment to quiet and allow you to grow in your understanding of what it means to be truly present.

    —

    I’m not the little girl on the Hawaiian beach anymore. I have real responsibilities and accountabilities just like you do. But, by committing to a practice of slow living, of practicing intention and presence in my days, I am helping her to continue to grow and thrive.

    No matter your age or where you are on your journey, you can reclaim a piece of your innocent joy as well—the childhood version of yourself is still inside you, waiting for you to commit to their well-being.

  • How to Stop Feeling Consumed by Your Fear of Being Alone

    How to Stop Feeling Consumed by Your Fear of Being Alone

    “Pain makes you stronger. Fear makes you braver. Heartbreak makes you wiser.” ~Unknown

    You wake up and check your phone, expecting a “good morning” text, but there’s nothing there. Going through your day, everything feels quieter, and there’s a gaping hole inside of you that nothing seems to fill. No matter what you do, you can’t seem to shake that relentless ache for the one person who consumes your mind.

    It’s an emptiness that makes you feel lost and scared.

    There’s nothing quite like a breakup to spark fears of being alone. It’s like a wave of dread that hits you once the breakup dust settles and you realize you no longer have a partner by your side. Anxiety hits, and you start to wonder if you’ll ever find anyone to love you again.

    It’s a fear that I became very familiar with while dating in my early twenties.

    I was a late bloomer when it came to relationships. I never had a high school sweetheart, or even a college one for that matter, and spent half of my twenties in frustratingly casual relationships.

    Those relationships would fizzle out almost as quickly as they began, and every time, I was left heartbroken, wondering if I’d be alone forever.

    What made it worse was that I would see my friends in happy, committed relationships and doubt that I would ever have that for myself. Spending most of my life single felt like a curse.

    Then, after countless short flings, I met someone who would eventually become my boyfriend. It was a moment I had been waiting for all those years, yet it wasn’t what I expected.

    I thought being in a relationship would bring me happiness and peace, but once I had the serious, committed relationship I had been yearning for, I realized I was only masking my loneliness under a false sense of security. Because being with someone who was not right for me felt equally lonely.

    So now that I’m single again after ending that five-year relationship, I have a new perspective on my feelings of loneliness and fear.

    While I don’t have all of the answers and everyone has different ways of coping, here are some things that helped me overcome my fear of being alone after a breakup.

    Lean on others for support.

    A breakup can feel a lot like losing your balance. The person you once relied on for support has been pulled out from under you, and it can be difficult to find your footing.

    Those feelings of loss only exacerbate the feelings of loneliness.

    However, if you look around, you’ll most likely find that there are people in your life who are just as supportive (if not more) as your ex-partner.

    After my breakup, the first people I turned to were my friends. They were my shoulder to cry on, and I could talk to them about anything and everything.

    Even though I wasn’t communicating with them as often as I should have during my last relationship, when that ended, they were right by my side without hesitation.

    Understand that being single doesn’t mean you’re alone.

    Almost everyone has at least one person they can turn to in times of need, so turn to friends, family, or whoever you feel comfortable opening up to so that you can vent, cry, yell, and express your emotions freely, without inhibition.

    If there’s no one in your life you can lean on, maybe this is a good time to work on building a support network outside of a romantic relationship by putting yourself in new situations and opening up to new friends. This way, being single won’t feel so scary because you’ll know you’re never truly alone.

    Embrace being single.

    Do you look at your breakup as just an ending or also a new beginning?

    If you view the change in your relationship status as a loss and nothing else, then, chances are, you also view being single as a negative, which allows your loneliness and sadness to get the better of you.

    Sure, you lost a partner, and the heartbreak that comes with it takes time to heal, but you can choose how you perceive the breakup and the experience of being single.

    So shift your perspective and focus on the positives by using this time as an opportunity to reconnect with yourself.

    During a relationship, many people end up mirroring a lot of their partners’ habits, likes, and dislikes, losing their sense of self in the process. It happens to the best of us.

    The end of a relationship is the perfect opportunity to reevaluate all of those interests and passions to see what is truly yours.

    Think about it: You no longer have to consider the thoughts, feelings, and needs of another person, which means you can finally focus on you and you alone.

    So embrace it.

    Having the time and space to focus on your own needs is extremely important for growth and happiness. That way, you can develop a stronger sense of who you are, which will help you find a partner who is a better fit in the future.

    Life’s ups and downs are all about perspective, and breakups are no different.

    Get out of your head.

    Oftentimes we overthink and overanalyze during times of stress and anxiety. It’s a vicious cycle that only perpetuates toxic thoughts and keeps us chained to the past. In order to move forward, you need to physically get moving.

    Immerse yourself in activities that pull you out of your mind so that you’re less apt to dwell. Find things to do that disrupt your negative thought patterns so that you’re not constantly falling into a pit of fear and sadness. Exercise, take up a new hobby, do something creative, start a new passion project—anything to get you engaged with the physical world.

    Focus on the world around you, practice gratitude, and be mindful of your thoughts and how they’re shaping your perspective of the world.

    While you can’t completely avoid the feelings of loneliness, particularly during those quiet moments late at night and early in the morning, moving your body and taking action can make the transition from relationship to single life that much easier.

    In turn, it will also ease those fears of being alone.

    Relearn how to do things alone.

    Having a partner in crime can be fun, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also have fun doing things alone.

    There’s a certain level of empowerment that comes from doing an activity by yourself. It takes confidence and forces you into independence, both of which many of us could use more of.

    So revisit old activities you used to only do with your partner and try doing them on your own. Find brand new activities to try out by yourself as well.

    After my breakup, I made an effort to do things I was too scared to do without a partner. I started with little things like going to restaurants by myself. Then I moved on to other activities like touring museums, relaxing on the beach, and visiting local sites in my city.

    The biggest activity I took part in was going on vacation by myself. I drove two hours away to spend a few days in a town I had never been to, which pushed me past my fears of tackling the unknown on my own.

    While all of these activities were terrifying at first, they taught me that I don’t need a partner to do the things I want to do. And it was empowering to know that I am capable of doing things by myself.

    At first, it may be a little scary to go it alone, but pay attention to how you feel after. You may not feel better after the first time you do it, but after regular practice, you may find that you feel stronger and more confident as a result.

    Practice self-care habits.

    Going through the pain of a breakup requires space to heal, so use this time for introspective self-care.

    Find practices and activities that add more peace and mindfulness to your daily life. You can do that through a meditation practice to clear your head and calm any anxiety you may be feeling, or you can start journaling and get your feelings down on paper.

    Other self-care habits include having a spa day, exercising, practicing healthy eating, and getting proper sleep.

    The point is to be a little selfish and focus on yourself and your needs. When you do the activities listed above, listen to what’s going on in your body and mind—thoughts, emotions, aches, pains, and all.

    It’s not easy, but facing your issues head-on will enable you to heal the wounds of the past so you don’t repeat damaging relationship patterns in the future.

    It’s Worth Waiting for the Right Person

    The last thing you want to do is enter into a new relationship simply because you’re scared of the alternative.

    Fear can lead to desperation, which can cloud your judgment and push you toward decisions you wouldn’t make in the right state of mind. It’s in moments of desperation that we end up choosing the wrong partner and settling for less than we deserve.

    It isn’t easy to embrace the single life when you’re afraid of being alone, but it’s all about perspective. Rather than allow your fears to back you into a corner and swallow you whole, challenge them by recognizing the opportunities in front of you.

    You just may realize that being alone isn’t so bad because it gives you a chance to explore yourself and put your best foot forward when you are actually ready for love.

    After all, is it not better to be single than to be driven by fear into the arms of the wrong person?

  • How I Climbed Out of the Valley of Loss and Healed

    How I Climbed Out of the Valley of Loss and Healed

    “In our lives, change is unavoidable, loss is unavoidable. In the adaptability and ease with which we experience change lies our happiness and freedom.” ~Buddha

    The universe was conspiring against me, I was sure of it. By the time I was thirty-six, I had lost everything in life that I had set out to accomplish—my marriage, my pregnancies, my two dogs, and eventually my house. The perfect family model I was so desperate to create was completely lost.

    Living alone and in fear of the future, I worried about what may or may not come, because everything I had tried up until that point had failed.

    I began doubting myself, as I wasn’t sure if all of my effort was worth it anymore. Anxiety and sadness gripped my heart and I drank to escape, because I really wasn’t up to the task of figuring out how to love myself in spite of my failed expectations.

    Then the universe added insult to injury: I found out my dad had metastatic colon cancer, and it was a total devastating surprise. I don’t know how it could have been, since as a nurse I could already see his sunken eyes, pale and ashen lips and skin, and the lack of energy in his step.

    Everything about him was telling me that he was dying, but when you love someone, it’s easy to see what you want to see.

    Selfishly, I needed to see my dad as the healthy, solid dad I knew. The dad I could rely on for advice and his pick-me-ups of “good job, kiddo.” But most importantly, I needed him to stay the man who helped me when things in my life were most dire.

    The thing is, it was not a white knight on a horse, it was my dad who loved and rescued me. It was he in his black Toyota pickup driving over 800 miles from Seattle to San Francisco to rescue me from my abusive marriage. He literally helped to pick me up off the floor after my husband had thrown me to the ground and tried to suffocate me.

    It was my dad who collected me and what little remained of my belongings, and without any questions or “I told you so’s,” packed me up and drove me back home to heal. And it was my dad who helped me hire a lawyer to file for divorce.

    When I learned that my dependable dad was dying, my mind tried to race against the symbolism of the metastatic invasion into my life that I refused to accept. I was losing again.

    How was I going to survive all of this loss? Would I have anything left or would I harden into a shell of a hollow woman?

    Despite attempts to plead and bargain with the universe, my dad died on a Friday. Friday June 21st. It was summer solstice and a day that not even the longest day of the year could light up. It was my darkest hour.

    At 10:00pm exactly, my dad took his last breath. It wasn’t until the undertaker came to pick him up and placed his lifeless body in their white plastic bag and I heard the sound of the zipper closing him in, that I turned in a childlike panic to face my mom and cry to her in half-truth, half questioning, “I’ll never see my dad again.”

    She looked at me blankly as the tidal wave of panic took over and I was drowning in pain.

    Many people run from the pain when they lose someone they love. They drown out the sound and fury of the feelings by numbing themselves in a variety of ways. I could have easily called my life quits and elected to stay living in the pain of loss, but instead something greater than me began to appear in my life. A spiritual side took over in a true form of resuscitative life support.

    I started to ask myself the bigger picture questions, “What else can I be doing?” “What else does life have in store for me?” “Why am I going through all of this?”

    Over the following months, I developed new hobbies and outlets for my self-care such as writing, meditation, and simply being quiet.

    I told myself it was okay to live in each moment and take life as it was presented to me.

    But the most importantly, I felt I was being spiritually guided through my dreams and my intuition, to my own inner wisdom showing me how to heal and activate my spiritual strength through my loss.

    “You can lose other people without losing yourself.”   

    “You can have loss without being lost.”

    Living beyond grief and loss is an evolution through a set of choices beginning with TRUST.  Trust the process. Trust yourself in the process. Trust that you can heal and flourish again in time.

    If you’re grieving right now…

    1. Know that time is your friend.

    We all learn to let go in our own way, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. Sometimes in parts, sometimes all at once. And then all over again. It is a process, and a process worth trusting.

    Choose to be patient with yourself. Give yourself permission to grieve and permission for the times you want to bounce out of it and watch TV.

    It can take months or years to absorb a major loss and to accept that life has changed. In whatever way it has changed, be kind to yourself by taking further pressure off, and don’t purposefully make any more major changes.

    Don’t worry about pleasing everyone else, completing everything on your to-do list, or keeping up with everyone around you. Sometimes it may take all your energy just to get through the day, and that’s okay. Sometimes that’s enough.

    2. Accept yourself and where you are from moment to moment.

    Grief isn’t always linear or convenient. Allow yourself to be sad, to be calm, to laugh, and to return back to being sad again. Lose all attachment to anything happening in a specific way. I remember being at work dealing with sick patients and having to leave the room because the tears and sadness would suddenly take over. It happens—let it.

    While it takes effort to begin to live in the present again and not dwell on the past, remember who you are in each moment—a beautiful soul dealing with transitory feelings—and know that is enough.

    3. Let the tears flow.

    If there is one thing I do well, it’s cry. Do you allow sobbing wails and tears? Allow the feelings of grief to arise and to pass. Emotional expression through grieving is normal and tears are a part of that process.   There is no reason to be embarrassed or try to suppress your tears. Crying is a normal human response to emotion and has a number of health benefits, including pain relief and self-soothing effects.

    Every time you allow an aspect of your pain to be felt and released, you are healing.

    A successful spiritual practice and one that gave me great freedom was to know, regardless of what loss I experienced in life, I can love myself through it all. Remember, you are not your pain and are worthy of love at all times.

    Though I walked through the valley of the shadow of loss, I will not live there. And you don’t have to either.

  • Free Up Your Space: Two Simple Questions for Easy Decluttering

    Free Up Your Space: Two Simple Questions for Easy Decluttering

    “Owning less is better than organizing more.” ~Joshua Becker

    There are lots of reasons to declutter—to free up space, to pare down belongings in advance of a move, to release any possessions that weigh you down emotionally, and to make room for new things to come into your life. And there’s another reason, though people don’t usually realize it: to reduce stress and overwhelm.

    The more stuff you have, the more time, energy, and money you need to devote to maintaining it, and the more likely you feel anxious in your cramped and potentially disorganized space.

    I declutter two to three times a year now, but my biggest decluttering was the one I did five years ago prior to moving in with the man who is now my husband.

    We each owned fully furnished three-bedroom houses. After much negotiation, we had decided to sell my split-level house and keep his rancher.

    My first step was to create two wee signs for myself. Both read, “Official Policy: Get rid of anything that does not bring pleasure, beauty, or purpose into my life.” On days when I became a bit muddled, those signs helped.

    My second step was realizing that there really are only two options when decluttering: “keep” or “get rid of.” There are, however, subsets to each of those categories.

    For “keep,” you must decide whether it’s being kept in storage of some sort (and what that might be—attic/basement/garage or rented storage space—or incorporated into your space.

    For “get rid of,” you have to decide whether it’s going to a specific person, being donated somewhere (and, if so, where), being sold, or being thrown out.

    Having worked into the “whats” of decision-making, I figured it might make sense to talk a bit about how to make these sorts of decisions, since it’s the rare person who is going to decide based solely on “what I like best” or “what fits in my new place.”

    One of the things my sweetheart and I did was decide what we were going to keep based on what we called a “must have” list.

    For each room, we decided what items we must have for the room to function properly. For our master bedroom, we decided we needed a bed, two nightstands, a TV stand with a TV, and one dresser.

    Once we had our list together, we focused solely on our necessities and figured out which items from where we were going to use to fill those needs. Only after we made those decisions did we add extras (like, say art for the walls, candlesticks, and the part of my hoard of crafting supplies that I kept).

    Making the list was simple. Deciding whose stuff got to fill the role of “dining table” or “dresser” or “bed” was a bit less simple, but we worked through it with love and dogged persistence.

    Here’s what I learned after decluttering and downsizing two full homes to merge them into one: You really only have to ask yourself two key questions:

    1. Do you love each object that you are considering?

    2. Do you use the object in question?

    You can actually start these in either order, because every single item has to jump through both hoops.

    1. Do you love it?

    You really ought to. Because life is too short to be surrounded by things you dislike or that you find oppressive to your spirit.

    If you despise an item, why would you want to keep it? (And yeah, I get “familial guilt” and all, but still. if you don’t have space in your new place and you don’t like it, this is the sort of stuff that you should be thinking of liberating, in hopes it will find someone who really does like it.)

    For clothing, optimally you should love the color, the style, the fit, and the way you feel in it, but realistically, I go with “what I like and wear and don’t mind being seen in.”

    For items, it means you should enjoy seeing them or using them. It’s kind of hard to love a can opener, but say you have two, and one hurts your hand and the other doesn’t, it’s pretty easy to decide you love the pain-free one. (If you have two and they both hurt your hand, which happened to me, then do what I did and get rid of them both!)

    And for items you’re keeping for nostalgia, a box of letters from an ex, for example, you’ll have to dig deep and be honest with yourself about whether this actually serves you, or just drags you down. You may have loved them in the past, but is it self-loving to hold on to them?

    If you’ve asked yourself if you love something, or if you at least don’t dislike it, you still have to proceed to the next question:

    2. Do you use it?

    For clothing, this means “Do you wear it?” And not in an “ever in life” way, but in a “within the past twelve months” way.

    If not, you probably ought to let it go, although I do believe in making the very occasional exception for this category as long as you have the storage space. That last caveat is very important.

    If you are crowding all of your stuff in order to keep a bunch of “maybe/just in case/but I can’t get rid of that dress/sweater/coat” items, then you are making every single day of your life harder than it needs to be. Because when your stuff is jam-packed, you can’t readily get to the stuff that fits, and that you wear.

    For every other usable item in the house, the same “within the past twelve months” rule applies. Possibly you only use that huge platter for turkey on Thanksgiving, and that’s cool—when next Thanksgiving comes, you’re still going to need it.

    If there’s “stuff,” though, that you haven’t used in ages, then you aren’t using it, and it’s a prime candidate for going. This was true, for example, of the ice cream machine I got rid of. On the one hand, it had been in the house for about thirteen years, so it was old; on the other hand, it had never been used—not even once—so it was brand new.

    As for stuff that has no practical purpose, like décor items, some people might think those are non-essentials, or are somehow non-functional. The purpose that they serve is to decorate your space and bring joy into your life. If they are something that brightens your life, and both you and your partner love it and have space to display or store it, you should keep it.

    Lastly, this tip from Yoda (sort of):

    3. Do or do not. There is no try “maybe.”

    Lots of decluttering gurus advocate creating a “maybe” pile for things that you can’t make an immediate decision about. I chose not to allow for it when we were downsizing as well as decluttering.

    The reason I chose not to use a “maybe” pile is because if you say “maybe,” you are essentially making a decision now to make the decision later, which isn’t really solving anything.

    It’s kind of like the advice when sorting through mail to not handle things twice if you can avoid it. If it’s trash/recycling, put it there right away, so you don’t have to go through the mail again later; if it’s filing, file it. So I opted as much as possible for immediate “keep” or “get rid of.”

    Five years on, there isn’t a thing we got rid of that my husband and I miss. There are, however, some things that we initially kept that we’ve since let go. Such is the way of decluttering.

  • Why I Won’t Just “Let Go” of the Hurt in My Heart

    Why I Won’t Just “Let Go” of the Hurt in My Heart

    “It’s not a matter of ‘letting go.’ You would if you could. Instead of ‘let it go’ we should probably say ‘let it be.’” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

    I’m not good at heartbreak. I wrestle the circumstances, hate it, and can’t let go of the hope that the relationship could be transformed.

    Aren’t there people who do heartbreak well? Aren’t there folks who sit in heartbreak for just a little while, then shortly fold up their hands and accept the situation? Sometimes it seems there are those who even flip a switch—”It didn’t work, we tried our best”—and that’s that, and they go about their merry lives.

    I want that. How do I get that?

    I was one of those children who were told they’re “too sensitive,” that I felt too much, too deep. Nowadays I understand that “You’re too sensitive” generally means “Please bottle your feelings. I don’t know what to do with them and they’re making me uncomfortable.”

    Yet I still feel it would be better to be less affected. After all, isn’t this Samsara (the name Buddhist’s gave to the cycle of suffering)—this longing, doing, clinging, and grasping that I do in a heartbreak state? 

    My ex-girlfriend and I parted ways lovingly—she needed more signs of commitment, I needed more closeness, and we worked those issues until exhausted—but the part of me that sometimes throws fits against what-is is throwing a fit. And the phrase “let go” strikes me as unhelpful, even impossible at times. I feel the loss, and I feel the hope that things could be different.

    How do I learn to be less affected? Isn’t “letting go” central to why I’m meditating, so that I can be someone, for god’s sake, who can let a thing go? To make peace and move on already?

    On a recent hot day sitting by the Willamette River in Portland with my friend Claire I asked them, “What do I do about my hurting heart and all my grasping?!”

    The river lapped by us. It’s the longest river in the U.S., which flows primarily north, or “uphill,” which is rare. The river comes up from Eugene and merges 183 miles upriver with the Columbia River on the border with Washington state.

    My predicament feels similar to the river: Why would it (I) flow uphill? Doesn’t it contradict the idiom that water follows the path of least resistance? Wouldn’t I choose an easier path, and not feel so much? Can I go downhill like it seems people who seem to let go more easily do?

    I said to Claire, “I hate this idea of letting go right now. What the hell does it mean anyway? I feel like some Buddhists are attached to the idea of letting go! There has to be a Buddhist understanding that things stick in our heart for a while and that’s okay.”

    Claire looked at the river and said, “There is a word for that.”

    “What is it?” I asked, eager.

    “Samsara,” said Claire, humored.

    Then we began to laugh. And laugh, and laugh. We looked at each other and Claire’s big brown eyes sparkled, and I laughed in a way I haven’t in too long, a way of laughing at my situation in good humor. It was laughing as surrender. Laughing as acceptance, and laughing because I saw myself for who I am—a mess. Suddenly I wasn’t taking that mess too seriously.

    We marveled at how attached we get to our sadness, how it feels indicative of how much we care and love.

    We laughed because we’re human, and this is what we’ve inherited: this tendency to fixate, but also simply the tendency toward heartbreak, the consequence of owning a soft heart and feeling longings for people and things that make us feel bright and alive, and then one day suddenly they’re gone and we miss them fiercely.

    In a recorded dharma talk on letting go, Zen teacher Frank Ostaseski said:

    “A student asks the teacher, ‘How do I let go?’
    The teacher says, ‘You can’t, you won’t. You don’t.’
    So I actually want to sit here and encourage us to relax more.”

    Relaxing feels more resonant to me than the concept of letting go, and it’s why Claire’s response was magic: it was an invitation to lighten up.

    For me, the language of letting go hasn’t felt kind or sustainable. Maybe because it’s a strong action verb; I’ve (mis)understood letting go as an action I have to take, a should—as if I’m at the racing block and the gun’s about to fire and READY SET GO I better be ready to LET IT ALL GO! when that shot sounds, or else.

    Letting go can feel like a linguistic misunderstanding to me, an encouragement to transcend being human. But we don’t practice to attain exalted states; we practice to allow our life to unfold truly.

    I’m reminded of Roshi Joan Halifax’s writing about grief:

    “When my mother died, I received one of the hardest and most precious teachings of my entire life. I realized that I only had this one chance to grieve her death. I felt like I had a choice. On the one hand, I could be a so-called ‘good Buddhist,’ accept impermanence, and let go of my mother with great dignity. The other alternative was to scour my heart out with honest sorrow… My sadness became part of the river of grief that pulses deep inside us, hidden from view but informing our lives at every turn.”

    Because I’ve been trying to force myself to let go I’ve been pushing away my experiences lately, and hating myself for longing and missing. This is violent. Being real about what impacts me, and how, is a radical and loving acceptance of my own life experience. My hunch is that allowing myself to be as I am will translate to allowing others to be as they are.

    ~~

    Shortly before we broke up, my girlfriend gave me a palm-size Buddha sculpture. It is carved in stone, feels cool to the touch, and looks like an old bald woman who is the embodiment of what, in Zen, we call Joyful Mind (one of the three minds, or Sanshin, of practice).

    Joyful Mind is all about finding delight in our difficulty and in the rich experience we have in Samsara. It is about being present in our struggle while also being attuned to an undisturbable place inside us.

    This little Buddha encourages me to lighten up in the same way that Claire encouraged me to lighten up. I like this joyful Buddha’s way of laughing, the way her shoulders are so soft as to not even be trying, yet her posture is still upright. The skin around her eyes is worn from laughing.

    Joyful Mind is about being present to the suffering, not about letting it go. Ironically, sometimes suffering eases up on its own when held this way.

    Part of what feels impossible about letting go is that it feels easy to confuse it with spiritual bypassing—the tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to avoid feeling emotions or to sidestep psychological wounds.

    I wonder if other practitioners step into this trap, too, of seeking to attain a state that disallows the mess and vulnerability of humanness. Like can I just let go already so that I don’t feel so much, so that this isn’t so painful? Can you just let go already so that I don’t have to deal with your complex and messy feelings? 

    Is allowing Samsara freedom from Samsara? When Claire reminded me that spiritual practice isn’t about achieving some transcendent, tidy state, I felt ease. I accepted my inner mess and remembered that our practice isn’t about being less affected, it’s about allowing everything to show up and being honest about how we’re impacted. Allowing everything to show up means that all my fears and vulnerabilities appear, and that’s more complicated than letting go.

    A fellow practitioner once told me that the reason we have two hands is because one holds suffering and the other holds the cosmic joke: we are equipped to hold the mess of life lightly. I want to be real about how I am impacted by life, and I feel newly reassured that my two hands are meant to hold it all.

    In the way that in AA they use the phrase “one day at a time,” I’m going to allow my own slow progress and forget about letting go for the moment. The truth is that I’ve lost something precious, and the longing for it fills me. It’s the longing for closeness, to know and be known, the longing for understanding and shared reality, for fun and safety.

    The loss of relationship is its own death and now in my belly it feels lonely. The depth of that feeling is indicative of how much I wanted to tend what I had.

    This is who I am, someone who feels a thing fully, and in so many ways over the years the overculture has taught me and so many others that it’s incorrect to be sensitive, and here I’ve internalized that oppressor: I’ve tried to beat my sensitivity out of myself and force myself to let go and stop feeling what I’m feeling, to get over it already, in the name of Buddhism.

    This misinterpretation has got to stop. I want to lighten up, to allow every ache, every resistance, every longing that unfolds. To allow it all, to stop resisting my experience, to watch it, to know I don’t have to act on it, and to keep good company with a sweet friend who reminds me not to take any of it too seriously.

  • How to Journal Away Your Disappointment in Yourself

    How to Journal Away Your Disappointment in Yourself

    “Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching

    “I can’t do this.”

    “Why do I look so fat? I’m disgusting!”

    “I haven’t done enough today. I am so useless.”

    “I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said that.”

    “Oh my god, why did this happen to me? What am I going to do now?”

    Since I was a teenager, there has always been a voice inside my head telling me that things are not going to be okay because I am not enough.

    At school, it told me I wasn’t popular or cool enough. At Arts university, that my work wasn’t original or deep enough. At my first job (which I disliked), that I wasn’t happy enough. In my current work (which I love), that I am never productive enough. And as the cherry on top throughout all these years, guess what—I’ve never been thin enough, talkative enough, or proactive enough.

    This voice has become so present and loud that it has led to severe anxiety attacks.

    One day, the feeling of self-loathing and despair was so strong that my usual journaling affirmations and gratitude practice were not enough. My soul, wounded by all the negative self-talk, needed something stronger. More than being fixed, it needed to be held in a tight, comforting hug.

    So that’s what I did: I knew that journaling was still the way, I just had to find a way to hug myself with it.

    Without thinking, I started writing to myself what a wise mother or a loving mentor would tell me in this situation.

    “My dear, I know you are feeling anxious about not having completed all your tasks for today. I know it makes you doubt if you will ever be able to achieve your goals. I know it makes you fear that you will end up out of money, out of friends, out of love. But here’s the truth: it doesn’t matter that you had a bad day. I know you’re trying hard. I know you’re giving your best. You deserve a rest. You are amazing, and you’re going to make it.”

    The effects were immediate: like with nothing else I had ever tried before, I felt a deep sense of comfort and relief.

    I had just discovered my new soul-medicine.

    How This Exercise Works

    The reason why so many of us constantly push ourselves to be more and do more (and blame ourselves when we fail) is because we’re trying to get from others the approval we have never learned how to give ourselves.

    This exercise teaches us to do just that: to give ourselves the appreciation we crave so much.

    But there’s one more reason why it is so powerful: it’s because it’s written in the second person.

    We are used to valuing more the compliments we hear from others than the ones we give ourselves. Therefore, it’s like having your adult self give your inner child the love and validation it has always wanted and needed, and that’s why it’s so healing.

    On top of that, writing it on paper instead of just thinking it in your head keeps your mind focused, and your heart fully immersed in the process. And it’s also quite relaxing!

    How To Do This Exercise

    1. Whenever your negative self-talk or your anxiety kicks in, grab your journal and a pen.

    2. Observe the thoughts and feelings that are happening right now. Don’t look away. Dive in.

    3. Now, imagine that the person thinking those thoughts and feeling those feelings is your inner child. Try to feel compassion and empathy towards their pain.

    4. Then, ask yourself: “Who is someone I look up to and what words would I like to hear from them in this situation?” This can be a higher power, a parent, a teacher, or whoever gives you comfort and guidance.

    5. Now, try to put yourself in that person/entity’s shoes, and start writing those words to yourself—to your inner child. Here are some examples:

    “I can see that you feel lost. You don’t know where to go next, and you doubt that you will ever know. But you will. I can assure you that you will. And when you know it, you can pursue it. You’ve made it so far, haven’t you? You have more in you than you think you do. You are kind to others, you are taking care of yourself the best way you can, you are doing everything at your reach. You always have. Just keep holding on, my love. This, too, shall pass.”

    “It’s okay to feel angry. Your anger is valid. I love you no matter what. You know what? You can scream. Scream, my beautiful creature. You are stunning when you scream. You are full of power, raw energy, and the time will come to use it well. You are simply taking your time. It doesn’t matter that things didn’t go well this time; but they will, when they have to. You are doing great.”

    As you write it down, let the words flow freely. Get fully immersed in the exercise. It might be helpful to imagine that you are hugging your inner child, and definitely focus on giving love, nurturing, caring.

    At points, the words you’re writing might feel like huge clichés, but it doesn’t matter: all that matters is that you feel them—that’s how you know it’s working.

    All You Need Is Love

    It’s easy to get trapped in a negativity loop: you feel bad because you failed to meet your own expectations; then you feel anxious because you’re feeling bad, and so afraid to get trapped into a negativity spiral that you don’t even notice you’re already in it.

    You can’t fight negativity with negativity. To break the loop, you need love.

    You have been hard enough on yourself. Give yourself the words and love you have been longing to hear. Do it from a different perspective—I guarantee, this will rock your world.

  • It’s More Important to Be Authentic Than Impressive

    It’s More Important to Be Authentic Than Impressive

    “The most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” ~Pema Chödrön

    All my life I’ve chased after success, as I was encouraged to do from a very young age.

    When I was six, my father got me my first proper study desk as a gift for getting into a ‘good’ school. The type of desk that towered over a little six-year-old—complete with bookshelves and an in-built fluorescent light. In the middle of the shelf frame stuck a white sticky label inscribed with my father’s own handwriting in two languages. It read: “Work hard for better progress.”

    Little did I know those words would set the tone for me and my work ethic for the next twenty years—until I finally began to question them.

    Hard work became my ‘safe space’ whenever I felt insecure. When I struggled to make friends at a new school, felt rejected, or felt like I didn’t belong, I would put my head down and drown out my emotions out by working hard. It became my coping strategy.

    My younger self didn’t yet have the emotional resources to deal with moving around, changing schools, and facing social rejection. When it became too painful, it was much easier to stay in my head than to feel vulnerable with my heart.

    So, whenever I struggled to fit in at school, I just worked harder with the misguided belief that if I did well, then I would be celebrated. If I became impressive, then people would finally accept and like me.

    And of course, my parents encouraged this behavior. I was rewarded for my hard work and I got good results for it too.

    But outside of my home, nobody seemed to care about my results. I still wasn’t fitting in at school. I still didn’t have many friends. My strategy didn’t seem to be working.

    So I worked even harder.

    By the time I graduated from University, I had completely bought into society’s definition of being ‘impressive’ without even questioning it once. If it was a prize everyone wanted, I wanted it too.

    My definition of being ‘impressive’ expanded to include looking good, dressing well, staying fit, and making good money in a highly-competitive field, even if I had zero passion for that profession.

    By then, I’d long forgotten the reasons why I wanted to work hard to be impressive in the first place, other than “That’s just who I am.”

    I was drifting further and further away from my true self, and I didn’t even know it.

    For the next ten years, I spent a lot of my waking hours working as a financial analyst, studying for more degrees and certification, and chasing after the next shiny thing so I could sound even more impressive to others. Plus, I was making a decent income while doing so. Tick.

    While on the surface I ticked a lot of those “impressive” boxes I had set out for myself, on the inside I felt emptier than ever. On the outside I looked successful, but on the inside, I felt like a complete failure.

    What Happens When Your True Self Calls You to Come Back

    Cracks started to emerge both in my work and in myself. It became challenging to fully show up for work as I increasingly asked myself: “What am I doing here?”

    A soft inner voice whispered, “It’s time to get out of here, you’re not meant to be in finance. What are you doing here?” So I began questioning what I was doing with my life. I mean, if not that, what was I meant to do? I’d invested so much of my time and energy into my profession; I couldn’t just change directions. And who was this voice anyway? Where was it coming from?

    My fake enthusiasm became harder and harder to keep up. This sinking feeling became more visceral by the day, and the feeling of not belonging in my workplace became increasingly obvious.

    Yet I swallowed those feelings down with gritted teeth and kept pushing. Because what else was I meant to do if not keep persisting?

    When I suddenly got fired it was an abrupt wakeup call. I needed to challenge everything I believed in and confront those big questions I’d put off answering for so long: “Who am I really?” and “What am I really about?”

    What I Learned Through My Four-Year Journey of Self-Discovery

    I spent the next couple of years immersing myself in a whole range of subjects that covered different angles on self-knowledge, in an attempt to answer the question “Who am I?”

    For most of my seeking, I was still trying to find answers as if they resided outside of me. I was still trying to find where I belonged professionally.

    But what started as a business journey quickly morphed into an inner-transformational journey that became deeply personal.

    This deep inner work allowed me to reconnect to my internal guidance system and my true self once more.

    Through this process I was able to take a good look at myself, confront my shadow side, heal my wounds of rejection, and forgive everyone involved, including myself.

    As I’ve come home to my true self, I’ve realized a few things about the cost of chasing impressiveness:

    When we chase after something external, we lose self-connection.

    When I heard that soft, loving voice inside my head, it was a small glimpse of spiritual awakening. It was a momentary connection to my inner mentor’s light that seeped through my deep dark fog of disconnection.

    We all have our own inner mentor, but we have choose to listen to it instead of trying to be who we think we’re supposed to be.

    When we trust others more than we trust ourselves, we can end up giving our personal power away.

    If we believe that the answers we seek lie outside of ourselves, we can forget to check in to see what’s true for us each individually. The more weight we put on other people’s opinions, the less we trust our own inner knowing.

    People can only speak to what they know based on their own perspective, background, and life experiences. When we allow other people’s opinions to overpower the choices our true selves would otherwise make, we end up giving away our personal power.

    I’ve found that it doesn’t matter how many well-meaning opinions we get; we need to find what resonates with us the most by checking in with our inner authority—which means going against what we learned growing up, when we were trained to ignore our inner voice and do what we were told.

    The pursuit of ‘impressiveness’ is a hunger that can never be satisfied.

    When we keep chasing after ‘impressiveness,’ we are in fact on a hedonic treadmill of always wanting more. As soon as we achieve one thing, we fixate on the next. We keep wanting bigger, better, and more.

    As soon as we attain or do something, suddenly what we have isn’t good enough anymore, and so we must now keep up. We fall into the comparison trap. The external goalpost keeps moving. We keep looking over our shoulders to see how we’re tracking against everyone, and it becomes a tireless pursuit of keeping up with the Joneses with no real end in sight.

    Every ‘win’ is temporary.

    We mistakenly see ‘impressiveness’ as proof that we’re worthy of love.

    When we chase after ‘impressiveness’ we’re really chasing after validation, approval, and a sense of belonging. We think, “If I can be impressive then I can be accepted.” We want others to look up to us, praise us, and ultimately, love us.

    However, the pursuit gets dangerous when we buy into the false belief that we have to work hard in order to prove we are worthy of love; that we need to become ‘impressive’ through our accomplishments and produce tangible proof of our worthiness.

    I’ve noticed that a lot of high achievers, like myself, have bought into this belief, possibly due to the achievement-oriented upbringing we were exposed to from a very young age.

    The danger is that it can become an acquisition addiction, and an arms race to get more degrees, more cars, more houses, more shoes, more toys, and so on.

    We can become addicted to buying ‘cool’ things to impress other people, or work ourselves to the bone just to get those long lists of accolades instead of recognizing that we are inherently worthy of love. Regardless of what we have or have achieved.

    We risk losing our individuality.

    When we chase after external validation and approval, we compromise who we really are in exchange for more respect, more likes, more kudos from our peers. We showcase a more curated, ‘acceptable’ version of ourselves to the world, and we hide other parts of ourselves that we think might be rejected by others. Even worse, we end up chasing after things we don’t even really want.

    Some of us inherit strong beliefs about what ‘success’ means and some of us strive toward pre-approved categories of impressiveness as defined by society, without checking in once to see whether these pathways to ‘success’ fit in with our true selves.

    In the end, we lose our individuality—the essence of who we really are.

    It requires self-connection to recognize what is true for us versus what is conditioned into us. It requires even more courage to step outside of these pre-approved paths to ‘impressiveness’ and live a life that aligns with our true selves.

    How to Reclaim Your Authentic Self

    I’ve discovered that breaking free from the illusion of ‘impressiveness’ and reclaiming your true self is really a constant two-step dance between recognition and courage.

    1. Recognition

    To reclaim your authentic self you have to recognize that you have disconnected from who you really are in the first place. Your achievements, your accomplishments, all the cool stuff that you own, and even your toned physique—they’re not who you really are.

    2. Courage to be your true self

    We have to have courage to stand in our truth and be our authentic selves. Recognition alone is not enough. For many of us, it’s the fear of disapproval that holds us back from stepping out of those curated, pre-approved categories that we have created for ourselves, and fully owning who we are, in all our beautiful, strange glory.

    My wish is that this becomes your permission slip to fully step into who you really are and own it. Being your true self requires tremendous courage, but it’s worth it. And having the courage to fully embrace your true individuality in all its quirkiness? That’s impressive.

  • I Thought It Was Love, But It Was Actually Abuse

    I Thought It Was Love, But It Was Actually Abuse

    “Alone doesn’t always mean lonely. Relationship doesn’t always mean happy. Being alone will never cause as much loneliness as being in the wrong relationship.” ~Unknown

    I don’t know if it’s the conditioning of Disney movies that makes every young girl dream of finding her Prince Charming, but that was my experience. My prince entered my life just like that, saving me from my boredom and taking me on a roller coaster of excitement. He assured me that our love was going to last forever, and the naivety of being sixteen made me believe him.

    It didn’t take long for his true colors to emerge; sadly, it took me longer to see them.

    I thought the control was over-protectiveness. I thought he cared when he told me what to wear, who I could associate with, and where I could go. The Neanderthal behavior must have touched something primitive in me, and I was overwhelmed with the urge to please.

    Quickly, I went from princess to property. He shouted at me, berated me, and mentally tortured me. And I thought I was being loved.

    To anyone who has never been in this situation, the words “run, Forest, run” might come to mind. However, we say this from an adult perspective, older and wiser. When you’ve been brainwashed since you were sixteen, it takes more than a quote from a movie to see sense.

    Everything became an argument. Every argument taught me to walk on eggshells. If I didn’t conform, he would ignore me. If I refused to listen, he would isolate me. If I cried, he would scream at me. If I had no emotion, he would play the victim.

    I thought I could make him better. I thought he would receive the love from me that he was lacking elsewhere and that this would make him change.

    I thought wrong.

    Nearly fifteen years later, I am the one who holds a lifetime worth of memories that I can’t forget, and I’ve had to recondition myself into believing that this is not my fault. No amount of “what ifs” can change a person’s innate morality. Mentally and emotionally healthy people do not try to make others feel unworthy of love and dress it up to be love.

    If you asked me to define love, I would tell you it is the ability to be unselfish. To be willing to put others first and sacrifice your needs and desires at times. More importantly, love needs to be reciprocated.

    But when I was with my ex, I felt as though I had to work hard to receive love. I needed to shut myself, my thoughts, and my feelings down and simply become a doormat, or else he’d emotionally abandon me.

    So, I tried that. I became a “yes” woman. I lost myself in the world of conformity, and it still wasn’t enough. He accused me of being unfeeling, emotionless, and devoid of passion. So, I changed again. I tried to become more like him. I would scream and shout to try and gain control, and then he called me manipulative and psychotic.

    I tried to combine the two. I tried to be religious. I tried to be a party-goer. I tried to be dominant. I tried to be submissive.

    Nothing worked.

    I cried, begged, and pleaded to be treated like a human. I asked for compassion but received cruelty. I asked for love and had to be satisfied with lust. I wanted hope but felt hopeless. Until I realized that I was asking for something that he was unable to give me.

    A narcissist is incapable of recognizing the needs of another. He/she cannot fathom that people have emotions, unless they are used as a method of control. They thrive on the idea that you believe in them and, rather than granting you equality, they manipulate you into believing that the scraps they throw you are the only ones you deserve.

    He told me countless times that he loved me, so why have I spent the last decade and a half repeatedly asking the same question, “Do you really love me?”

    If he loved me, how could he not understand my pain? How could he be okay with knowing I felt so low? How could he constantly betray me? Why couldn’t he make the same sacrifices as me? Why couldn’t he just be the person I first fell in love with?

    The answer to those questions is simple: The narcissist is a multi-faceted creature, a chameleon who adapts to your weaknesses and uses them to maintain a position of strength. Because of their personality disorder, they are lacking in the qualities that make you who you are.

    They are determined to keep you in a position of subordination because this feeds their need to feel superior, and when you fight to break out of that role, they leave.

    They show you good times to ensure that you feel indebted to them and to make you yearn for them once again. They make up and break up with you so often that you may find it hard to move on. If you do, you likely feel distrusting of people, making you an incomplete partner for a mentally and emotionally healthy human being.

    After a breakup, we often try to make ourselves whole by seeking another, the biggest mistake we could possibly make. Would you purchase an item with pieces missing?

    It’s a little crude to compare a human being to an object, but we cannot expect to ‘move on’ if we are seeking to replace the void left by a narcissist.

    Moving on shouldn’t mean jumping into a relationship with another human. It should mean taking responsibility for why we stayed in this unhealthy situation, recognizing what needs to be addressed and healed within ourselves, and moving on mentally from our trauma.

    My trauma originated from never knowing my father. I yearned for someone who would fulfill the role of a protector. At the beginning, my ex did. It didn’t matter how many times we argued, I knew that he would always fight in my corner, and that made me feel safe. Eventually, the cons outweighed the pros and I knew that I had to break free.

    Now that I’m on my own, I have days when I wake up and forget that I am no longer in this toxicity, I have days where I remember the good times, and I have days when I regret laying eyes on him. However, my days are no longer concerned with how I stand in relation to him.

    I wake up and wonder what I am going to do today. I actively pursue my dreams of being a writer, or I focus on other ways I can improve my life. I research my MARs (Masters by research) topic, I cook the food I like, I wear the clothes that I look good in. Small victories for some, milestones for a victim of narcissism.

    I pray, I meditate, I exercise, and I write. Most importantly, every day I heal. I take back a part of my life that I lost because I made the mistake of trusting the wrong person with my heart.

    I rebuild the relationships I lost when I gave in to his attempts to isolate me from my friends and family—because I didn’t want to argue and because I was ashamed that, for all my outward strength and intellect, I couldn’t find the courage to leave.

    I cut out the unhealthy influences from my life, and if I can’t, I distance myself from them. I refuse to regress to the lost teenage girl and instead, harness the energy of a strong, powerful, and determined woman. I refuse to conform to the idea that a woman is “past her sell by date” and reject the notions of commodifying humans.

    I also reconnect with who I am beyond my roles. I’m more than someone’s mother, daughter, niece, and grandchild. I am a writer. I am a creator. I am a dreamer.

    There is a difference between being alone and lonely. Sometimes we need to be alone to truly rediscover ourselves. The relationship between you and yourself is more important than any other.

  • How to Free Yourself from Your Spiritual Drama

    How to Free Yourself from Your Spiritual Drama

    “You have no friends. You have no enemies. You only have teachers.” ~Ancient Proverb

    My very wise aunt, a talented psychotherapist and one of my spiritual teachers, has told me many times that the people, places, and things that trigger us are just “props in our spiritual drama.”

    This phrase has stuck with me for years because it’s catchy and it rings so true to me. If we are struggling, it’s not a matter of the external force, it’s about what it provokes in us.

    We don’t heal by trying to change others. We heal through breaking cycles; through knowing and honoring ourselves by creating healthy boundaries, processing the past, and living presently to make different choices.

    We don’t grow by staying in the same circumstances and hoping they will be different, or by leaving one set of circumstances only to repeat the same patterns with new people and places. We grow by stepping out of our inner default programming and into discomfort, and by consciously shifting away from the patterns we know and choosing different environments and dynamics.

    The people, places, and things that come into our lives are there for our spiritual journey, learning, and evolution. We can use these ‘props’ for good, we can use them to stay stuck, or we can use them to spiral down. As adults, the choice is ours.

    The props in our spiritual drama are what trigger us the most. They may be people, situations, or even certain qualities we notice in strangers.  

    My most challenging relationship is with my father, and while I could get stuck in that hardship story, I believe that he was placed in that role to assist me in the lessons I needed to learn while growing up and into young adulthood.

    The guy that I just dated, who I fell hard and quick for, was a prop in my relationship practice and process in continuing to clearly define what I want in a partner and what healthy boundaries I need to set.

    When I feel pain in my heart and want to stand up for the child who is being yelled at by a stressed mother on the subway, it shows me my own emotional hurt and the ways I haven’t expressed my truth about how my young inner child was treated poorly.

    When I feel anger when confronted with economic inequality, inconsideration/lack of caring, and other injustices in this world, it teaches me that I am not doing enough to feel satisfied and proud of the ways in which I contribute positively to society.

    Anything that I have not made peace with, found forgiveness around, or worked out within me yet continues to be a prop that encourages my spiritual growth.

    As I’ve contemplated the props in my spiritual drama, I trust they are there to assist me on my path.

    Challenging people and situations can be very difficult to live with and through, but I believe they serve an important purpose. If we are conscious and choose to move toward growth, freedom, and love, we can take this adversity and turn it into empowerment so we are more capable of being our best selves.

    Two main points have stuck out to me as I try to evolve through my spiritual drama.

    1. Situations repeat themselves until we learn the lessons.

    The lesson is ours to be learned, so if we don’t learn it the first or the tenth time, the pattern will continue in a vicious cycle until we finally get the message and choose a different way.

    Sometimes if we examine where or by whom we are triggered, the lesson is clear right away. Other times we need some guidance because we recognize something doesn’t feel right, yet we can’t get out of our own way enough to see it clearly.

    Friends, mentors, and family members we have healthy relationships with can be great at helping us understand our cycles and patterns so we can break free. Other times, we need to go within.

    When confronted with a low point, we have the opportunity to acknowledge what isn’t working and figure out in what direction our gut wisdom is guiding us.

    Personally, I had a habit of choosing men who were very passionate about their career or a serious hobby, and they would prioritize this passion over me, which led me to feeling hurt and uncared about.

    When I held up the mirror to examine myself deeply, I was able to see that as long as I wasn’t prioritizing myself and showing up to fully love for myself, I would attract partners who would partially reject me in the same way.

    A second layer of this was that I was subconsciously living vicariously through my partners’ aliveness and passion because I was missing that in my own life. Once I developed my own passions and started doing work I love, the need to feel this joy vicariously faded away and I started desiring partners who are more balanced and can have multiple priorities.

    The change may be uncomfortable, but usually quite rewarding in the end. And the discomfort we feel moving into the unknown is better than the despair we feel when repeating the same pattern over and over and staying miserable in the ‘known.’

    2. Our triggers can help us discover unmet needs, and meet them.

    Oftentimes we feel triggered by certain people, qualities, or situations because they represent ways we feel consciously or subconsciously uncared for, attacked, neglected, and rejected.

    For example, let’s say your boss gives you some constructive feedback regarding your work, and you feel like it’s a personal attack or a criticism instead of feedback intended to support you to help you succeed.

    In this scenario, instead of feeling attacked or rejected by your boss, you could ask yourself why you’re feeling such intense emotion. Is it because you’re hypercritical of yourself? Or do you feel shamed for not getting praise or approval because that’s a pattern you were taught growing up? In this instance, the trigger might teach you that you need your own approval.

    The more we can meet our own needs and lovingly re-parent ourselves, the more these triggers will fall away. So the inquiry becomes the key to moving through this spiritual drama.

    We need to ask why to understand our triggers more deeply, shift the immediate emotional response to curiosity, and eventually release the trigger by clearing past baggage and learning the lesson to show up for ourselves differently.

    Whenever, I’m feeling particularly triggered by a person or behavior, I take a few minutes to sit quietly, go within, and ask myself what it’s about and what I need to do to take care of myself.

    Maybe my inner child needs some reassurance that she is safe and loved.

    Maybe my body needs some relaxation because my nervous system is over-stimulated or stressed.

    Maybe I need to play, dance, and move energy through my body because I’ve been too much in do/go/on mode.

    Once I take care of my own needs, I’m not focused on the other, the prop, the trigger anymore. I am peaceful and present.

    This realization has served as a helpful reminder as I’ve moved through my life and felt the range of emotions that have come up. It’s never all about the other person; on some level, it’s about me. It serves me well to keep the focus on myself, what’s going on for me when the triggers come up, and what I can learn and process so that those triggers no longer live inside my body, mind, and soul.

    As we own and clear what is within us, the props in our spiritual drama fall away and we become lighter and can live more peacefully.

    May this serve you and may you be free.

  • How to Free Yourself from the Burden of Your Potential

    How to Free Yourself from the Burden of Your Potential

    “Changing directions in life is not tragic. Losing passion in life is.”

    We all have natural talents, and in some cases, we may have devoted years to honing our skills and turning them into a career. As we’re on the road to achieving our goal or fulfilling our potential, there may be this invisible weight that starts to bear down on us.

    That’s because there is a burden of potential. The burden is that fear that we’ll never reach our full potential, and the obligation and pressure we feel when we don’t want to continue on the path we’re on.

    Sometimes we tie our sense of self-worth to making this one dream come true, because we’ve told people that we’re trying, and we don’t want to seem like quitters or failures if we consider changing course. That fear can keep us glued to the track, even if we have a sense that we would be happier doing something else. It can be hard to believe there might be more than one way to reach our potential and live a satisfying life.

    My Own Struggle with The Burden

    I moved to Los Angeles to become a stand-up comedian.

    Once I got over my initial fears of getting on stage, the fear train just kept on coming. (This is one of the few forms of transportation that shows up with any consistency in LA.)

    The problem was that I was not a lost cause. I have memories of making packed rooms laugh and getting positive feedback from not only my friends but other comedians whose careers I had followed. I had potential.

    Did that mean I had to keep trying? Even on the days I bombed, or no one showed up because I was performing at an art gallery/coffee shop at 1am? Did I have an obligation to fulfill this potential?

    At the time I was getting into psychology and seriously considering changing tracks and becoming a therapist. I was afraid I was abandoning my dream and my potential. But my own therapist at the time reminded me that my own unfolding into my potential wasn’t done. I could be just as creative being a therapist as I could when I was doing stand-up.

    At the time I kind of rolled my eyes internally and prepared myself for the slow descent into mediocrity. I probably said, “Oh yeah, that’s a good way to look at it” while my doubts lingered. But now I know she was right.

    Though I still feel “in process” on my path, I’ve not only increased my creative output, I don’t feel that I’ve compromised on my dreams at all. Every day isn’t easy, and doubts still creep in, but I feel much more at peace with my choice.

    So how do you release the burden? Here are a few things to consider if the weight of your dream feels more like a shackle.

    1. Pick the path you won’t mind walking for a while.

    We all have heard the old adage “Life is about the journey and not the destination.” It’s frustrating but true. Nobody knows when their life might change or when they might reach their goal. Between the big achievements, there’s the slow meandering of everyday life. Pick the life you can love between the big achievements.

    What I loved about stand-up was the creativity, finding humorous ways to point to larger truths, and having a voice. What I didn’t like about stand-up was open mics, late nights in bars, drinking, most male comics (sorry, but there’s a lot to this for another article), and constant financial insecurity. So basically, most of it outside of being on stage. I didn’t like the day-to-day.

    You need to at least get some joy from the in-between stuff.

    These days, I like my day-to-day. Even on the days something “big” isn’t happening, I love that my day is filled with interesting conversations and making my own hours and being in bed by 10pm. Every day certainly isn’t perfect, and I still struggle some days but overall, I can do this for a while, in between accomplishments.

    2. Allow your dreams to evolve.

    Sometimes, we can get so attached to a certain idea of success that we don’t allow our vision to expand as we change and grow. If you play basketball, you might dream of playing in the NBA. If you are a dancer, it may be Julliard. But those aren’t the only ways to a happy life. In fact, there have been enough biopics to show that reaching the pinnacle of success isn’t always the path to happiness.

    In the Netflix show Losers, they show how a big upset or “loss” could lead to an even more successful outcome, one the athletes at the time couldn’t have imagined for themselves (like boxer Michael Bentt, who goes from defeat and despair to a successful Hollywood boxing coach for movies like Million Dollar Baby). “Success” seemed like a trophy, but it can morph into this whole wonderful life you couldn’t have predicted for yourself.

    3. Question why you have this dream.

    Sometimes a dream may not even be ours. It could be something our parents wanted to, but never did accomplish. It could be something we think society wants us to be, or we’re seeing someone else’s life and thinking, “If I could be like him/her/them, then I’d feel great about myself.”

    We need to investigate our chosen path and make sure we chose it for ourselves. Working with a mentor, coach, or therapist can help us look under the hood at our life path and see if it’s really where we want to go.

    Ultimately, it’s about learning to hang out between your ideas for your life and where you are now and understanding that how you feel now is the biggest indicator of how you will feel then. The accomplishment won’t be what makes you happy. The goal is to cultivate happiness wherever you are so it will be there wherever you end up

  • Why I’m at Peace with My Weight Gain

    Why I’m at Peace with My Weight Gain

    “Resistance keeps you stuck. Surrender immediately opens you to the greater intelligence that is vaster than the human mind, and it can then express itself through you. So through surrender often you find circumstances changing.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    I took a deep breath, feeling the recent change in my belly. I pinched at my belly rolls. They were familiar, I’d had them before, but recently I had gone through a period of over a year where I was in a smaller body. Now I was gaining weight again.

    I refuse to step on the scale, so I don’t actually know how much weight I’ve gained. I can just feel it in the extra belly rolls and the snugness in some of my clothes. In my mind, I have two choices: to wage war on my body or to surrender to the weight gain.

    Surrender is the ability to let go of the crushing weight of societal and personal expectations. It’s waving the white flag, signifying I’m giving up all the diet culture methods I’ve tried so hard to make work. I’m acknowledging that they actually never worked in the first place. This option isn’t always so easy, though.

    For some context, I’m a body positive and fat positive activist. I advocate for acceptance and health at every size. I tell others they’re worthwhile just as they are. Though when it comes time to put them into practice within myself, it’s very challenging.

    I still have days where I suck in my stomach, hoping to appear skinnier to the world and to myself. I try to shrink to become small enough. I feel as though my worth lies in the number on the scale (even though I’m a stranger to it now).

    I lie to myself and say that I’m never going to find a partner if I keep gaining weight. I beat myself up about the food I’ve consumed and I compare myself to other people.

    My body positive journey is far from perfect; I struggle with all of these things. One big reason is internalized weight stigma or fatphobia. It infests my mind and can take over if I’m not careful.

    I mean, look at the world: We fear and despise fat. People are bullied and discriminated against because of being in larger bodies. Fatphobia is very real. It’s ingrained subconsciously; our society trains us to be this way.

    The Body is not an Apology outlines some ways in which fatphobia rears its ugly head. In jobs, fat employees tend to be paid less for the same work. In dating, they often deal with people who fetishize them rather than seeing them as humans. In fashion, there are rarely sizes available beyond a size 16. In medicine, doctors see them as weak-willed and lazy.

    This is not surrender in our society. This is bullying and prejudice. No wonder it’s hard for people to accept their changing bodies—there are so many consequences for being fat.

    The irony of fat-shaming in the name of health is that it actually causes adverse health effects. According to a survey done by Esquire magazine, two-thirds of people report they’d rather be dead than fat. Can you imagine the damage this amount of stress does to one’s system?

    No wonder we’re terrified of gaining weight. We let those messages infiltrate our minds, and they drive us to pinch at our belly rolls as if we’re the worst people ever.

    On the other hand, being thin means being accepted, flying under the radar, even being complimented. It means that life is easier because you’re not oppressed in this way. Still, fatphobia manages to creep into all of our minds.

    When you’re scared to death of what other people are going to think of you, you’re carrying your own sense of internalized fatphobia. This phenomenon even impacts those who are in smaller bodies because of the negative feelings they have about themselves and the world.

    It makes sense, then, that my first reaction to my body admittedly isn’t always unconditional love. Rather, the old messages in my mind were saying, “You’re not good enough. You’re disgusting. No one will ever love you. You’re a failure.” They were loud and unrelenting. I was familiar with these messages.

    For many years I waged war with myself. I was stuck in cycles of binging and restricting that wreaked havoc on my body. I thought I was being “healthy,” but really I was very sick.

    I was obsessing over every little thing I consumed, making sure to track seventy-two calories of butter to my MyFitnessPal app and being hysterical when I gave into a Twix bar. Weight control owned me. I was constantly thinking about food.

    Binging and restricting create terrible health risks—getting physically sick from too much or not enough food and brittle hair, not to mention the emotional consequences that occur like stress, obsession, and the absence of joy.

    I loathed my very existence, and I definitely was fighting a war against my body and myself. I thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. It was utterly exhausting.

    I started to think that there had to be another way to relate to my body.

    When I was twenty-two, I discovered the body positivity movement. I began with a program called Bawdy Love, which was all about being a revolution to loudly declare that every body is worthy and no body is shameful.

    I began to follow body positive influencers online like Megan Jayne Crabbe, Tess Holiday, Roz the Diva, Jes Baker, and hashtags like #allbodiesaregoodbodies. Fat women filled my feed. They were beautiful and unapologetic. They taught me that fat isn’t bad and that people in larger bodies aren’t lazy, unhealthy, or unlovable.

    Now, I must say, I’m in a smaller body. I have privileges that many people do not. My level of weight gain so far is still keeping me in a body that’s relatively accepted by society. I don’t know what it’s like to face discrimination based on my size.

    I do, however, know what it’s like to hate your body and think that you’re broken. I know what it’s like to do the opposite of surrender. When I’m living this way I do things like workout until I’m ill, take my favorite foods out of my diet, and berate my body in front of other people. This is what waging war looks like.

    Instead of doing this, I chose to surrender to weight gain. I make this choice every single day. I try to let go of my expectations and preconceived notions. I’m throwing my hands up in the air.

    This isn’t a happily-ever-after story where everything is perfect. Rather, body acceptance takes rigorous work as well simply just letting myself be.

    I’m continuing to enjoy my food free from disordered eating. This means no restricting; every single food is available at any time. You won’t hear me talking poorly about my body or about anyone else’s. I refuse to diet and I refuse to indulge others in their diets.

    To counteract the voices that tell me I’m not good enough, refute them with “You’re worthy and lovable just as you are. Weight is just a number. You’re okay.”

    Eventually, I started to believe these thoughts are true. Part of me thinks that maybe, just maybe, my existence on this planet isn’t for nothing. In letting go of the self-pity, a beautiful sense of self begins to bloom.

    Surrendering is harder than you may believe. Internalized weight bias runs deep.

    I think at times I come off as someone who’s super-confident in myself and in my relationship with my body, but it takes a whole lot of work to get to the point of surrender. The point of being free from the grips of diet culture.

    I still poke at my belly, but mostly it’s with curiosity. If I feel disgust, I quickly try to turn my thoughts around to have compassion and confidence. I notice when my thighs are pressed against a bench. I smile, feeling thankful that my legs move me around.

    I don’t step on the scale because I know that it can’t tell me anything about my worth. The numbers are irrelevant. I open my arms to weight gain, though sometimes taking a deep breath first. Accepting it means healing from a disordered relationship with my body and food.

    Weight gain is an indicator that I’m living with joy in my life. I’m enjoying meals out with friends, snacking on treats at work, and taking seconds. I’m eating when I’m hungry, what a revelation.

    I’m taking deep care of myself, and that may not look like other people’s definitions of self-care. That’s okay.

    Fatphobia may say that I’m being stupid, but I choose surrender today. For me, that means throwing out lifelong conceptions that I’m not good enough. It means no longer running in circles chasing my tail, trying to lose weight. It’s opening up to the idea that there’s another way to go about this. It’s peace and joy.

  • Why My Abuse Is No Longer a Secret

    Why My Abuse Is No Longer a Secret

    “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” ~Anne Lamott

    To say I had a tough life would be a gross understatement. Growing up in a strict Catholic Italian family I endured my fair share of emotional and physical abuse. I was unloved and suffered great violence at the hands of both my parents, mostly my father.

    No one ever talked about this. On the outside, we were the ‘perfect’ family. Both my parents had decent full time jobs; Mom was heavily involved in the church and was the pillar of the community. Everyone respected and liked my parents.

    Growing Up Scared

    I spent most of my teenage years terrified of my parents. I hated them and wished I had a normal mom and dad like my friends did. I craved love, compassion, and affection. I so desperately wanted a normal life.

    I’ll admit, I wasn’t winning any “Teenager of the year” awards, but I’m sure my punishment never fit any crime I committed. Dad’s brutal force and mom’s lackadaisical attitude toward it all had me wishing I was dead. On many occasions.

    I have very clear memories of dad storming downstairs into my bedroom after an evening shift at work, ripping off my blankets, pulling me by my leg out of bed, and whipping me. He stopped when he was tired.

    I never knew when these random visits would happen. They just did.

    I feared coming home after school, I feared when they came home from work, I feared bedtime.

    Seeking Redemption

    Long after I moved out and had a child of my own, my mom became parent of the year. No one ever spoke of the abuse. It happened. It was their normal. And life went on.

    My mom finally became the mother I longed for. Dad wasn’t too far behind. Still unloving to me, he adored my child and with that, finally treated me somewhat like a human being. My parents would do anything for me and my son.

    I welcomed these new parents into my life. Loving, supportive, caring, and affectionate. Mom became my best friend. Dad became a father figure to my son. I appreciated this, as I’d separated from Julian’s father when he was just eighteen months old and we never saw him again.

    Through the Years

    As time went on I maintained a very close relationship with my parents. With my father it was mostly for my son; with my mom, it was simply because I let bygones be bygones. I forgave them both and we just moved on.

    I carried the trauma with me throughout my entire life. I spent a lot of time healing and growing. I needed to do that for me. I wasn’t the least bit interested in carrying all that heavy weight around. I had to learn to let it go. And I did.

    I let it go through writing, much to my family’s dismay.

    Finding My Voice

    I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but I discovered blogging. At first I was blogging about fun Feng Shui stuff. Then I slowly slipped into personal development, and there I found my voice.

    I would share my stories and my readers would reply. They felt me. They totally got it. I wasn’t alone in my healing, and I realized that people desperately needed to hear my stories so they could heal too.

    At first I would share stories of healing from bad relationships (Lord knows I had enough of them), and then I started sharing stories on self-confidence and self-love. The more I wrote, the more impact I was having on others.

    I had found this voice that was helping people around the world, and I was more than happy to use it.

    And Then It Was Time

    I held back for the longest time on sharing my family trauma. I wasn’t sure. Should I or shouldn’t I? Will I hurt people? Will I help people? I struggled with this for years, until one day I finally put it out there.

    I wrote of the trauma, the pain, and the abuse. I poured my heart out about the lack of love and encouragement in my childhood—two things every kid deserves from their parents. I spoke of random beatings and being terrified.

    The replies and emails I received from people around the world shocked me. They thanked me for helping them forgive. They cried. They asked me how I did it and how they could let go and move forward.

    Finally, something good was coming from all this pain. I was not only healing myself, but helping others heal too. The more I wrote, the more we all healed together. And it was a beautiful thing.

    Not Everyone Shared My Enthusiasm

    I was sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that none of my family would ever read my stuff. Surely none of them were open minded enough to read self-help stuff, especially mine. They didn’t read blogs.

    They followed the news and immersed themselves in negativity and drama. They craved and hung on to misery and trauma. They’re not going to read anything from me ever. I was positive of this.

    I was wrong.

    Someone read a blog. I’m not sure who it was exactly, but I have my suspicions. A cousin perhaps. I’ll never know and at this point, it no longer matters. Someone read a blog and shared it with other members of the family.

    It was a good one. It was a Mother’s Day blog, and I went on about how my mom wasn’t always the mother of the year. How she beat me and let my dad do the same. I talked about how not all moms deserve to be honored on this special day.

    However, in my defense, I closed this piece with how my mom later became my best friend and the mom I had always longed for. No one read that part apparently.

    I didn’t become aware that my relatives had read my post until my mom’s funeral in February of 2019.

    My Final Goodbye

    Mom had been suffering with Alzheimer’s for the last fifteen years. We were waiting for her to die. We wanted her suffering to hurry up and end. (Dad had passed away five years earlier).

    I’ve been living in Guatemala for the last four years and hummed and hawed about whether or not I should return to Canada for her funeral. I had said goodbye to her when I left Canada.

    Somewhat reluctantly, I made the decision to return, be with my sisters and family, and say my final farewell to mom. And besides, I hadn’t seen most of my family in a long time. I was looking forward to catching up with them.

    That never happened.

    Being Shunned at My Mother’s Funeral

    I arrived in Canada and spent the first few days catching up with friends and two of my sisters. I was looking forward to seeing the rest of my family over the next two weeks. The day of mom’s funeral I knew I would see them all.

    Not the best place for a family reunion, but isn’t that usually the way? Weddings and funerals?

    I walked into the church and greeted a few people. Then my eldest sister walked in and brushed right past me, uttering a very brief and cold “oh, hello” as she continued to walk away. That’s odd, I thought. We’ve always been pretty close.

    Then another family member walked by without even a word. Hmmm. And then another one. I was numb. What was going on?

    We all congregated in the church for mom’s service, and the whole time I was confused and saddened by the fact that my family was shunning me. Why was this happening? Especially on this day?

    The Final Straw

    After the ceremony, we all headed to the basement of the church for fellowship. There, even more family members ignored me. I’d say hi, and they’d turn and walk away, leaving me standing with my heart broken and my jaw on the floor.

    I still didn’t know why I was being treated like this, though I had my suspicions—that someone had read a blog. And sure enough, two days later, I found out.

    My family members wanted to strangle me. They were disgusted with me. I embarrassed the family. I was a disgrace.

    This is How We Heal

    I spoke to no one after that aside from one sister. She understood.

    I found my voice and lost my family. I learned how to use my voice to help others heal, but not everyone understands this or is ready to heal. Keeping family secrets is sometimes more important.

    I long to have them back. But I realized this is also part of my healing, since it’s led me to release things and people that no longer serve me or my higher good.

    It breaks my heart into a million pieces to know that my family will choose losing a relative over healing. It frustrates me to think that people would rather stay broken, tormented, and in silence than repair what needs to be fixed.

    But I know I’ll never make them understand any of this, or grasp the concept that anger is toxic, negativity is poison, and only in love and forgiveness can we heal what hurts and move beyond the past.

    What’s Your Story?

    Too many of us keep our stories buried deep inside, afraid to share them with the world. Afraid of upsetting the apple cart. Embarrassing our families. We keep the trauma and the pain to ourselves, hiding behind secrets and drowning in shame.

    I did that for years, but when I finally released the truth I was set free.

    What’s your story? What family secrets and lies are you keeping buried deep inside that are tormenting your soul? It’s in talking about them and sharing our stories that we can heal from the pain.

    It is also in sharing our stories of pain and recovery that we can help others find healing and freedom too. Generational curses can end when we speak up and speak out.

    Always remember, the truth will set you free.

    My Final Goodbye

    My time with my family has come to an end. They are no longer part of my life (aside from a few). My heart is broken and I know without a doubt, this healing will take a bit longer, but it’s necessary.

    I know how hard it is to forgive. I also know that some people will never choose forgiveness and would much rather live with anger and hate.

    My wish and sincere hope is that one day, they will see that forgiveness will set them free.

  • The Best Thing to Say to Someone Who Won’t Understand You

    The Best Thing to Say to Someone Who Won’t Understand You

    “True love is born from understanding.” ~Buddha

    I believe one of our strongest desires in life is to feel understood.

    We want to know that people see our good intentions and not only get where we’re coming from but get us.

    We want to know they see us. They recognize the thoughts, feelings, and struggles that underlie our choices, and they not only empathize but maybe even relate. And maybe they’d do the same thing if they were in our shoes.

    Maybe, if they’d been where we’ve been, if they’d seen what we’ve seen, they’d stand right where we are now, in the same circumstances, with the same beliefs, making the same choices.

    Underneath all these maybes is the desire to feel validated.

    We’re social creatures, and we thrive when feel a sense of belonging. That requires a certain sense of safety, which hinges upon feeling valued and accepted. But those feelings don’t always come easily.

    There was a time when one of my relationships felt incredibly unsafe. I never felt understood or validated, and worse, I often got the sense the other person didn’t care to understand me.

    When you’re the one withholding the comfort of understanding, it can imbue you with a sense of power. And it also creates a sense of separation, which, for some, feels safer than closeness.

    This person often assumed the worst of me—that I was selfish and weak—and interpreted things I did through this lens.

    They would belittle my beliefs and opinions, as if they warranted neither consideration nor respect.

    And they would even make fun of me when I tried to share my thoughts and feelings, minimizing not only my perspective but also my personhood. Like I had no value. Like I wasn’t worth hearing out. Like I didn’t deserve respect.

    It hurts.

    It hurts to feel like someone doesn’t care to see where you’re coming from or hear what you have to say.

    It hurts to feel like someone is more committed to misunderstanding you than developing any sense of common ground.

    It hurts to feel invalidated.

    We often take that pain and churn into anger. Or at least that’s what I did.

    I fought. I screamed. I cried. I tried to force them to see my basic goodness and view the world from my vantage point.

    I tried to impose my will upon them—the will to be valued and heard—regardless of whether they were willing or capable of giving me those courtesies. And I caused myself a lot of pain, all the while justifying this madness with an indignant sense of righteousness.

    Because people should try to understand. People should treat each other with respect. People should be kind and loving and open. Because that would make the world feel safe.

    But here’s the thing I’ve learned: Should is always a trap. Things will never be exactly as we think they should be, and resisting this only causes us pain.

    But more importantly, there’s something more empowering than trying to force other people to be who we think they should be—and that’s being that person ourselves.

    In this case, I realized, that meant understanding the person who wouldn’t or maybe couldn’t understand me.

    Remember what I wrote about separation feeling safer for some than closeness?

    This was actually a huge insight for me. That perhaps when someone seems unwilling to embrace me with understanding, it’s more that they’re unable to let me in, for reasons I might not ever know.

    I actually did a lot digging to try to understand what would make someone—and specifically, this someone—closed off to understanding. What pain could have hardened their heart so dramatically? As often happens when you dig, I found a lot to explain it.

    I found unresolved traumas that likely led to deep feelings of shame and vulnerability—which likely cemented into a need to always be and appear strong. Impenetrable. And when you’re impenetrable, not much can get in. Not new ideas, and definitely not attempts at deep connection. Which is really sad when you think about.

    Sure, it hurts to feel someone doesn’t understand you. But can you imagine the pain of rarely understanding anyone because letting someone into your heart actually hurts? Can you imagine living life so guarded, so scared, constantly hiding—and possibly without even realizing it?

    I’ve come to believe that when someone won’t make any effort to understand us, this is usually what it comes down: deep pain that’s blocking them from love.

    They might be shut down to everyone. Or specific ideas that trigger something from their past. Or maybe we, ourselves, are the trigger.

    Maybe we remind them of something they want to forget. Maybe our very presence forces them to come face to face with something they’d rather avoid.

    I remember reading an article once about the contentious relationship women often have with their mothers-in-law. The author used, as an example, a mother-in-law who always complained about her daughter-in-law’s couch, and then wrote, “You never know. She may have been raped on a couch that looked just like yours.”

    This hit me hard. The thought that everyone has secret pains, sequestered in shame, that often manifest in hurtful behaviors.

    I know I’ve been there before. Though I’m not proud to admit it, I’ve shut people out or shut them down because they’ve triggered something painful in me. Knowing this, I understand how pain can bring out the worst in us.

    Considering this doesn’t justify disrespect or mistreatment of any kind. It doesn’t condone abuse. But if we really want understanding, maybe the key is to choose understanding.

    Maybe the secret is to broaden our perspective beyond what would make us feel safe in a moment so we can do our part to help create a greater sense of safety for everyone we encounter.

    Maybe by choosing to offer understanding, we can influence the people around us to heal their pains so they can one day open their heart a little wider. When they’re ready. When they feel safe.

    So what’s the best thing to say to someone who doesn’t understand you? I think it’s, “I understand that you can’t understand.”

    I think it’s accepting the other person where they are, even if you have no idea where they’ve come from or what’s driving them.

    Because even if we don’t know the specifics, we can know there’s some explanation—some complex web of past events and psychological factors that make them who and how they are.

    This isn’t easy to do.

    It often requires us to create boundaries, whether that means avoiding specific conversations or even creating physical distance in that relationship.

    It requires us to pause and connect with our deepest intentions before reacting impulsively, defensively, in anger.

    And it also requires us to mourn and let go of the relationship we hoped to have, knowing we’re offering the kind of compassion and consideration to someone else that they may never be able to give us back.

    I take comfort in knowing this is the higher road, not because I feel superior on higher ground but because it’s less painful there—for me, and for everyone I encounter in my life.

    When I choose to be the change I wish to see, it’s less important to me that everyone else sees me, values me, gets me, and understands my good intentions—because I do. Because I know I am coming from a place of love, kindness, and integrity.

    And this is a strong foundation for navigating a world full of hurt people who aren’t ready or able to love.

  • How to Trust That You’ll Be Okay No Matter What

    How to Trust That You’ll Be Okay No Matter What

    “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” ~Ursula K. Le Guin

    Did you play with cootie catchers as a kid?

    You picked a number and watched anxiously as your friend counted it out. Open. Close. Open. Close.

    You chose a color or picture or word and waited in anticipation as your friend unfolded the flap and read your destiny.

    Or how about that MASH game? Mansion, apartment, shack, house?

    I played these games with an insatiable desire for all the details.

    How is all of this going to play out?

    Where will I live?

    What will become of me?

    I was fascinated with details, and anyone who could supply them. Fortune cookies, horoscopes, and psychic phone readings all held the promise of telling me exactly what I yearned to know.

    Will I be okay? 

    With time, curiosity gave way to hard-core, type A planning. I’d plan everything out in excruciating detail and get my heart set on one specific outcome.

    I’d make a deal with the cosmos. Everything will be okay if it turns out just like this, okay? Okay.

    I craved certainty and the illusion of control.   

    The answer “surprise me,” made me uncomfortable. Playing it by ear was torturous. Penciling it in felt like the easy way out.

    I’ve made a lot of plans along the way: graduation plans, wedding plans, birth plans, career plans. Yet, no matter how painstakingly crafted these plans were, I was always a little surprised with where I ended up.

    My actual wedding dress was nothing like the pictures I collected with friends in high school.

    My thirty-eight-hour, two epidural labor was nothing like my 100% all natural birth plan.

    My house in Arizona is nothing like the one I’d dreamed of having in Northern California.

    And I’ve been okay.

    Okay, universe. I get the message.

    It’s not really about the details.

    We can make the best of difficult times, rising up after we’ve been dragged through the muck. We can surprise ourselves with what it turns out we actually want. And we can rain all over our own parades.

    The details are delicious, though.

    It’s so satisfying to make a list and check things off. It feels so good that sometimes we’ll even write down the things we’ve already done. And there’s something so soothing about having the who, what, when, and where sorted out.

    Best of all is knowing that the whole plan is exactly, perfectly the way you want it. It’s positively intoxicating.

    The only trouble is that the details hardly ever turn out as planned.

    This whole attachment to details thing is getting harder as time goes on. At a time when I most want to know if we’ll all be okay, I suddenly can’t figure the details out. Maybe I’ve lost my touch, or maybe the plans are getting more complicated.

    There are so many more variables and people involved now. Where it was once just me and my cats, there’s now me, my husband, my children, our families, old friends and new friends, employers, clients, school systems, licenses, and a mortgage to consider.

    With each new piece comes countless questions. So many, in fact, that I can’t even picture what all of this is going to look like.

    That’s got to be okay.

    I’m learning to accept that I’ll be okay if I don’t know the details because I know how I want to feel and what I want to leave room for in my life.

    As much as we’d like to take credit for them, the details are often things that just present themselves when they’re good and ready to be seen, anyway. They tend to sort themselves out in ways that we never could have planned.

    We take one step, then another. We prepare the best we can with what we know, knowing how we want to feel when it’s all said and done. Then we reassess along the way.

    Part of me really wants to fight that because it still believes that having all the answers now will guarantee that everything will be okay. Maybe it’s time to start having a little more trust that I’ll find a way to be okay no matter what happens.

    The more comfortable I get with letting the details reveal themselves when the time is right, the more aware I am of all the people who want to know the plan right now.

    They want to know when you’re visiting or moving back to your hometown or having your next child or finally graduating or asking for that raise.

    They ask all kinds of detailed questions about your plan, so much so that it can leave you feeling ashamed for not having figured it out.

    I get it, too.

    People want to feel closer to you or important or useful. They want to be heard.

    Maybe they’re kind of nosy. Or bossy. Or maybe they’re bored.

    Maybe they just really care and want to solve what they think is a problem for you.

    And maybe they also have a deal with the cosmos that everything will be okay if…

    I get it because I’ve been them. I’ve interrogated, and I’ve demanded answers. Even after understanding that I can’t have absolute certainty (or control), I’ve been that person squeezing out the details before it’s time.

    Understanding is different from knowing deep in your bones that you’ll be okay no matter what.

    When you know, you live and breathe it. Instead of seeking control, you seek clarity. Instead of certainty, you seek courage.

    When you know the truth, you also know that it’s supposed to be a little scary to look out into the uncertain future. It’s unnerving to say, “Here goes nothing.”

    It takes courage to walk into the future knowing that you don’t have all the details nailed down. Your next step may be right, it may be wrong, it may lead you nowhere, and people may think you’re crazy, but you have to take it at some point.

    The truth is, no one ever really knows how it’s all going to look, but you probably have a good idea of how you want to feel and what’s most important to you. And if you don’t, maybe that’s why the details are so elusive.

    (But all the same, you don’t need the details.)

    You don’t need to see the details to trust that you’ll figure them out when the time is right, and you don’t need to see your path to know in your heart that it’s there waiting for you to take that step.

    You don’t need to know exactly how every piece will play out to know what the most important pieces are.

    And you don’t need absolute certainty to know that you’ll find a way to be okay no matter what happens.

    I’m not saying, “Let’s all throw caution to the wind from now until forever.” Make plans, yes, but there’s no need to obsess over the details if the details aren’t clear. Meet planning with flexibility and trust. Be curious about what happens next, not controlling.

    So go ahead, daydream, plan, manifest, make a vision board, or whatever calls to you. Just remember to begin from living and breathing the truth: that you will find a way to be okay no matter what.    

    I have no idea where I’ll be working five years from now, what our house will look like, what we’ll do on the weekends, if I’ll have lost the baby weight, or if I’ll dye my greys, but I do trust myself to make the call when the time is right.

    I don’t know all the when’s, where’s, or even how’s, but I do know how I want to feel and what I hold nearest to my heart.

    I want to feel light, energized, and free.

    I want to find meaning in my work.

    I want to be home in time for dinner.

    I want to create space for contemplation and creativity.

    I think I’ve had enough of the heaviness that comes from dragging around a lifetime of plans. It’s too much pressure, and even the most carefully made plans might change in the end.

    I still make plans, and I’m not throwing my bullet journal away any time soon. I’m just not letting my fear that I won’t be okay or that I’ll choose wrong or that people will disapprove suck the life out of living any more.

    So go ahead, universe. Surprise me. I’ll be okay no matter what.

  • How I Stopped Being Busy and Why I’m Now More Fulfilled

    How I Stopped Being Busy and Why I’m Now More Fulfilled

    “Sometimes doing less is more than enough.” ~Kris Carr

    Two years ago I made a radical lifestyle shift.

    Prior to this change, I was constantly striving to do more, to achieve more, to be more. I was squeezing as much as I could into any given day. I was in conflict between building a business, working, studying, and having time for pleasure and fun. I was taking on way too much and losing myself in the process.

    Building a business is a lot of work, far more than I had imagined, and it takes time to generate consistent revenue that you can live off. In order to make ends meet it was necessary for me to have paid employment. I often had multiple part-time jobs, and at times I worked full-time running my business on the side.

    I studied and studied and studied for over a decade. When I completed one course I would start another. I have multiple certificates, diplomas, and even a master’s degree.

    I obsessively compared myself to others. Their achievements all seemed bigger and better than mine. This constant comparing made me feel inadequate and dissatisfied with my own successes. So I worked even harder to do more, achieve more, and be more.

    I felt guilty taking time to relax and play. I didn’t enjoy downtime because I felt like I was being lazy, and having a quiet moment also highlighted just how fatigued I was from living my workaholic lifestyle.

    Friends admired how much I was achieving, always commenting, “I don’t know how you do it all.” Quite frankly, neither did I. All I knew was that I was completely exhausted, I wasn’t happy, and I was becoming disconnected from the people I cherished the most.

    My life needed to change. I couldn’t continue to push through the fatigue anymore because I was beyond worn out. I wanted more joy and happiness in my life. I wanted to be more connected with those closest and dearest to me. I realized then I had to do less.

    Before I could start reducing my commitments, I had to first identify what was really important to me. These were the questions I asked myself:

    • What do I love to do?
    • What energizes me?
    • What brings me joy?
    • What do I really want?
    • What do I absolutely have to do?

    In an ideal world we’d get to only do what we love to do. But in reality, there are things we are obliged to do whether we want to or not. We can delegate some activities we don’t like doing, but other tasks only we can do.

    After identifying what was truly important to me and what I absolutely had to do—spending time with those closest and dearest to me, using my business as a way to teach and support others, engaging in activities that aided my physical and mental health so I could be my best self—it was time to stop doing things.

    There was a lot of discomfort with letting go. It was certainly an odd and unusual feeling to have space in my day, and I had to really fight the temptation to fill my days with an ever expanding to-do list.

    Next, I established boundaries to support doing less. Boundaries such as:

    • Not working after a set time each day
    • Not working weekends
    • Not checking emails or messages or looking at social media after a set time in the evening
    • Not checking emails, messages, or looking at social media in the morning until after breakfast
    • When on vacation, not working and limiting my screen time

    Setting boundaries meant I needed to get comfortable with saying no. I said no to being around people and in social situations that drained my energy, I said no to business opportunities that were not aligned with my overall business vision, I said no to further study and more qualifications because my ten-years plus of study and numerous qualifications were more than enough, and I said no to things that I really did not want to do.

    This was not easy for me. It is far easier for me to say yes, as I don’t like to let people down, and I don’t like to miss out on opportunities. But it was time for me to focus only on the essential and what would make the most impact to my life and business. I could no longer try to do everything.

    I had to remind myself that saying no was not actually a no, it was simply my prioritization, and by saying no I was saying yes to the things I really wanted and creating space for what matters the most to me.

    I also made a big mindset shift around my comparison with others. Instead of feeling less than others because of their success and achievements, I began to see others’ wins as an inspiration and reminder of what is possible.

    Additionally, it occurred to me that we only get to see other people’s highlights in life, work, and business, and this is a very inaccurate view. All we see is what they want us to see—their successes and achievements. We don’t get to see the hard work and failures they may also have experienced. Regardless of success and amazing wins, everyone experiences highs and lows.

    Much to my surprise, I also found out that successful people don’t say yes to everything; they’re much more strategic and only say yes to what will enhance themselves, and they’re very good at delegating. This knowledge changed my perspective around trying to do it all.

    By doing less I found I had more time, energy, and enthusiasm for the things most important to me. I felt more alive and joyful. The quality of my work I improved. And I became more present to life and people around me, which improved my relationships enormously.

    Occasionally I have moments where I feel like I should be doing more, but the happiness and fulfillment I feel from doing less overrides those moments. I can’t go back to how things used to be and experience the unhappiness and fatigue that resulted from constantly striving for more.

    Before anything gets on my calendar or I say yes to requests or tasks now, I ask myself these questions to guide my decisions:

    • How important is this to me?
    • Will this energize or exhaust me?
    • Do I absolutely have to do this?

    Doing less does not mean I do nothing; doing less means I spend more time doing what matters most to me, which makes my life happier and more fulfilling.

  • How to Recognize Painful Emotional Triggers and Stop Reacting in Anger

    How to Recognize Painful Emotional Triggers and Stop Reacting in Anger

    “Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

    There I was again, regretting the spiteful words that had cascaded out of my mouth during a heated argument with my partner.

    I felt that old familiar feeling, the burning in my solar plexus that bubbled up and erupted like a volcano, spilling out expressions of anger, blame, and criticism.

    It had been a rocky few months; my partner was struggling to find consistent work, and our credit card debt was on the rise. Suddenly anger kicked in and I lashed out, accusing him of slacking off and guilting him about me being the only one working.

    As the words spilled from my mouth, I knew deep down that what I was saying was hurtful and untrue. I could see that my partner was trying his best, but my anger had taken over, causing suffering that I would later regret.

    This was a familiar pattern for me. I’ve frequently reacted emotionally, without understanding why, and caused suffering to myself and my partner and chaos in our relationship. I spent the next few days beating myself up about my reaction and wondering, why do I never seem to learn?

    Though I wasn’t self-aware in that particular moment, I know that anger is our body’s response to a perceived threat. It triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response. Our heart rate increases, we become tense, and adrenaline, our stress hormone, releases, so we often spiral into reaction mode in order to protect ourselves.

    Although we tend to view anger in a negative light, I have come to learn that anger itself is a valid emotion, just like happiness or sadness. And it does, in fact, serve a valid purpose. Anger sends a message to our body and brain that something painful within us has been triggered and is asking to be acknowledged. In many cases, it signals that there is something much deeper, a wound that brings up vulnerability and pain.

    We need to take a step back, go inward, and begin to explore where the triggers for these behaviors and reactions stem from.

    Growing up, we are conditioned to behave in certain ways based on our environment and circumstances.

    As children, certain behaviors are ingrained in us from our family and peers. We learn to mimic those around us—for example, how they communicate and respond to one another—and over time we implement those behaviors as our own. Not only do we mimic their behaviors, we also take on their fears and beliefs. Then, when something triggers these fears and beliefs, we react in order to protect ourselves.

    When I began delving into the root cause of my reactions around finances, it surprised me to learn of the deep conditioning I had been living through my parents’ stories about money.

    When I was growing up, my parents often struggled to make ends meet and were under a lot of financial pressure.

    They did their best to protect my brother and me, attempting to not let their financial stress impact our lives. But the truth is, we cannot help but be conditioned by our environment. Unconsciously, we pick up on our parents’ energy and develop certain coping mechanisms and patterns that become deeply ingrained as we continue to carry them through life.

    When I was able to look past the anger around my own financial insecurities, I discovered deep fears and vulnerability.

    I was living with the painful belief that my partner and I would always struggle financially, that we would not be able to get by, and that we would experience the same hardships that my parents did. This story was interwoven through my family, going back even further to when my grandparents and great-grandparents lived through extreme poverty in Eastern Europe. This conditioning was so much deeper than I could ever imagine.

    Identifying where these beliefs stemmed from gave me the insight to take a look at the bigger picture and understand the painful stories I had taken on as my own. It allowed me to take responsibility for my own destructive patterns. I was beginning to see how my reactions were triggered by an unconscious fear out of a need for survival.

    Your triggers might be completely different, and they may pertain more to pain from your childhood than inherited beliefs and fears. For example, if your parents regularly shamed you for mistakes when you were a kid, you might react defensively whenever someone points out an area where you have room for improvement. Or, if you felt ignored growing up, you may have a knee-jerk reaction whenever someone can’t spend time with you.

    The problem is, our conditioning is so deeply ingrained within us that we are not even aware of our reactions most of the time. They just become an automatic response. We cannot always recognize that we are simply replaying old patterns over and over again. We tend to blame external circumstances or others for causing our suffering.

    We play the victim without realizing that we ourselves are the ones causing the drama and the pain around us.

    I was at a point in my life where I needed to make a choice: continue living my old patterns, which were causing negative reactions and suffering, or take responsibility and ask myself, “What is underneath my anger? What is the root cause of my suffering?”

    When you look back to your past to understand your triggers, it will feel uncomfortable and challenging at times. But when you are able to sit with your emotions and delve a little deeper, you start breaking through your conditioned patterns and behaviors and set yourself free.

    The only way forward is by choosing to do the work to get there.

    It’s important to understand that our conditioning came from many years of reinforcing these old beliefs, so it is no surprise that change won’t happen overnight. We need be kind to ourselves through this process instead of judging ourselves and our mistakes, or beating ourselves up if we fall along the way. Each step we take brings us closer to breaking old patterns and forming new, positive ones.

    So where to begin?

    These are some techniques that have helped me on my journey toward breaking old patterns.

    1. Don’t react; pause.

    When you experience that old familiar feeling of anger or frustration bubbling up inside you, don’t react. Instead of erupting like a volcano pouring out hurtful words and reactions, try pausing for a moment.

    Take some space to reflect and name the emotions that surface—maybe fear, resentment, shame, or desperation—and explore underneath the anger. Ask yourself, “What was triggered for me at this time?”

    Don’t try to overanalyze the situation; just sit with the emotions and see what arises. Do you feel vulnerable or powerless, or a sense of sadness, betrayal, or fear?

    2. How does it feel in your body?

    Ask yourself, “Where do these emotions sit in my body? What are the sensations they present?”

    Once again, don’t overanalyze; just sit with the bodily sensations. Maybe you feel heat in your solar plexus or an aching in your heart. These sensations are asking for your acknowledgment; send them love.

    3. Identify your go-to response.

    Ask yourself, “How would I usually respond in this situation?” Maybe you would react by shouting, trying to push someone’s buttons, or becoming defensive.

    Take the time to recognize your usual response and sit with it for a moment. Identify how this response may cause pain and suffering to yourself and others.

    4. Reflect.

    Ask yourself, “Am I acting from a place of love and kindness?”

    By asking yourself this, you take the focus off blaming others or the situation, take responsibility for your own actions, and reclaim your personal power.

    By taking responsibility, you are then able to consciously choose how you respond to any given situation. Remember, you don’t have control over how other people respond, but you do have 100% control over your response and if it causes joy or suffering.

    5. Practice awareness.

    Remember you are acting out a conditioned behavior; it is your automatic response. When you practice awareness by identifying conditioned behaviors, you begin to take the power away from the old patterns and create space to form new positive ones.

    It’s like rewriting your story. You have the power to recreate your story and transform old patterns into ones that serve you and align with your true essence and purpose in life.

    6. Be kind to yourself.

    Your conditioned responses and behaviors are your defense mechanisms, the coping strategies you learned to protect yourself in the world.

    Acknowledge that you’ve always done your best based on what you learned growing up, and you’re now doing your best to change. If you struggle, treat yourself with kindness and compassion. It’s okay to make mistakes; don’t beat yourself up. Remember, every step you take brings you closer to personal freedom.

    —

    You may find it helpful to keep a journal to reflect on the above points when your old destructive patterns emerge. Journaling has been my savior during this process.

    These techniques empowered me to recognize conditioned patterns and behaviors that were holding me back. They’ve also enabled me to communicate and connect with others positively and effectively. It’s not always easy to identify when you are acting out an old behavior, but the more you practice awareness when situations trigger you, the easier it will become to break these old patterns.

  • A Surprising but Effective Way to Get Out Of A Shame Spiral

    A Surprising but Effective Way to Get Out Of A Shame Spiral

    “I have found that, among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.” ~Maya Angelou

    As an aspiring daily meditator, I’ve been instructed by many a spiritual sage to think of my emotions as clouds drifting across my internal landscape. The idea here is that clouds come and go, so clinging to any one cloud is an exercise in futility.

    I like this metaphor. It overlaps quite nicely with the cloud-classification skills I learned in third grade and haven’t since put to use.

    The more time I spend on the cushion, the more I realize that some of my emotions are cirrus clouds: feathery wisps of humor, annoyance, or connection that drift away as quickly as they came.

    Others are cumulus clouds: hearty puffs of joy, nostalgia, or anger that make themselves known by casting shadows on the ground.

    In my experience, only one emotion is a cumulonimbus cloud: an angry, heaping, blackened pile that trudges sluggishly across the sky. That emotion is shame.

    Shame plants himself down in front of the sun with no intentions of leaving. He makes a god-awful racket with ceaseless thunderstorms and doesn’t move until he’s good and ready.

    Recently, I found myself in the thick of a shame spiral. I had made a series of oversights that were impacting my very new and, as such, very delicate, romantic relationship.

    The mistakes I’d made were honest, but I should have known better, and this became the mantra that fueled hours of self-blame and judgment. My mental movie was like a 1500s tragicomedy, and I was the snarling, callous villain.

    I was feeling like sh*t, and I certainly wasn’t making it any better for myself, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I couldn’t focus on my work, my social life, or even the simple task of taking out my recycling.

    As a person in recovery, I knew that a shame spiral was my one-way ticket to a first drink. So I rang up a trusted mentor for guidance. Over steaming coffee in the hidden back booth of a nondescript coffeehouse, I bemoaned my vivid ruminations.

    What’s Shame?

    Research professor and best-selling author Brené Brown is all over the shame game. She makes clear that guilt is the feeling that you’ve done something bad, while shame is the feeling that you are bad, and as such, “unworthy of love and belonging.”

    As a recovering perfectionist, I get hit with red-hot shame when I do something “wrong.” (As my mom loves to remind me, I sobbed inconsolably when I got an A- instead of an A on my fifth-grade report card.)

    As a recovering codependent person, I get hit with extra shame when I do something “wrong” in the context of relationships. Here cometh the fear of abandonment and the cold sweat of unworthiness!

    Because shame is the feeling that we are intrinsically bad, it’s particularly conducive to spirals—cycles of self-fueling negative energy that perpetuate ad infinitum.

    I know I’m in a shame spiral when I seek reassurance from my friends compulsively; don’t want to leave the house or interact with anyone; don’t feel the need to wear decent clothes, do my dishes, or other acts of self-care; and feel totally uninspired to do the things that generally give me joy.

    In reality, these actions are ways of subconsciously punishing myself. We accept the behavior we think we deserve, and when I’m in a shame spiral, I don’t feel like I deserve much of anything.

    The Solution

    So anyway, back to my conversation with my mentor. I was talking a mile a minute, running my hands through my frizzy (unwashed) hair, and articulating, in great detail, all the ways I’d done my partner wrong.

    It was not a pretty scene. But, as mentors are wont to do, she listened without judgment. When I’d conveyed the whole story, visibly deflated like a sad balloon, I turned to my mentor with wide eyes.

    “How can I fix this?” I asked her.

    She paused, digesting, and replied firmly, “Call someone and ask how they’re doing. Go to the food bank. Volunteer. Be of service somehow.”

    Her suggestion seemed so out-of-left-field that it stopped me in my tracks.

    Call someone and ask how they’re doing? I thought. But that has absolutely nothing to do with my problem or me! (Shame is a very self-referential emotion.)

    I wanted to ruminate, stew, fix! I wanted to call my best friends just one more time and unpack this whole thing, top to bottom. Also, if my intentions for service were self-serving, was it even service anymore? Shouldn’t I only “serve” if I’m really jonesing for some Good Samaritanism?

    I relayed all of this to her. She listened patiently; she’d heard it all before.

    “Hailey, you need to get out of yourself,” she said. “You are driving yourself crazy, cooped up in your mind this way. Give yourself a break.”

    So I did. And it worked. Here’s why:

    1. Shame traps us in our thoughts; service puts us into action.

    In an appearance on Oprah, Brené Brown offers three ways to stop a shame spiral:

    1. Talk to yourself the way you’d talk to someone you love when they feel unworthy.

    2. Reach out to someone you trust.

    3. Tell your story.

    Brené Brown is an absolute sage, and her research on shame and vulnerability has profoundly changed my life. But when I’m in my darkest shame spirals, these three tactics aren’t quite enough for me.

    Because my shame is so self-referential and all-consuming, I cannot think or talk myself out of a shame spiral.

    Every thought—no matter how brilliantly it rationalizes my actions or how warmly it reassures me of my own goodness—is coated with the persistent, underlying certitude that I am bad.

    My shame is like an advanced-stage, resilient bacteria; the first course of antibiotics doesn’t make a dent. I need to prove to myself, with not only my words but my actions, that there is more to me than what I’m so ashamed of. Service is an easy road out of my frazzled mind and into the world around me.

    2. Shame isolates; service connects.

    When I’m ashamed, the idea of being social sounds like torture. I’m normally quite extroverted, but when I’m spiraling, I don’t want to hang out with my closest friends, let alone strangers. In the thick of a spiral, it’s not unusual for me for cancel plans, be unresponsive to friends’ messages, and go dark on social media.

    Isolation enables my shame to fester. It keeps the scope of my world small. Service, on the other hand, does the opposite.

    Service is intrinsically connective. First, I’m connected in real time with the person I’m serving. The newcomer to the twelve-step program I call to check in on, the man whose bowl I fill with soup, the kid I read aloud to.

    Second, I’m connected to my community. Few acts of service exist in a vacuum; typically, I’m at least peripherally involved with a community organization, a church, or a grassroots group of do-gooders determined to make the world a better place. And though the unbridled optimism and rah-rah mentality of service groups can get on my nerves, there’s something heartwarming about being part of something bigger than myself.

    Finally, there’s that universal connectedness; the sensation of being human, of being one of seven billion people dancing their way through this complicated and confusing thing called life. When I’m in service, I’m helping other people with other problems who have baggage of their own. With this perspective in hand, ruminating about my shame suddenly feels far less important.

    3. Shame exhausts; service awakens.

    Self-flagellation takes a lot of emotional energy. It’s exhausting to rewind, fast-forward, and rewind the movie reel of your mistakes. Because it’s our human tendency to defend against threat, a part of us—no matter how small—will fight against the shame. This is the part that will rationalize our behavior, craft a narrative for our actions, and pepper us with positive self-talk.

    These two forces—“I am good!” vs. “I am bad!”—are at odds with each other. The result is an internal Civil War, one that rages as we try to fall asleep, as we stare at the tile wall in the shower, as we drink our coffee on the patio. It can become the soundtrack to our days.

    Service provides a respite from this turmoil. By getting us out of our own minds and into the world around us, it gives the shame soundtrack a much-needed pause. In that silence, we can gain new perspective and peace.

    4. Shame breeds shame; service breeds hope.

    Shame is self-perpetuating; it cycles ‘round and ‘round the same tired litany of self-criticisms and judgments. In such a state, there is little room for anything novel to enter our consciousness. If we respond to our shame by self-isolating and hibernating, we just make the echo chamber smaller. Shame breeds shame.

    Service, on the other hand, connects us with the newness of other people’s stories and challenges.

    Studies have shown that novelty makes us happier whether we’re shame-spiraling or not. Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, writes, “Often we’re happier, we feel more energetic, more productive, more creative when we try something new, when we challenge ourselves a little bit, when we kind of go out of that comfort zone. That atmosphere of growth can really boost our happiness.”

    Service gets us out of our own way and offers a new palette of emotions and values to choose from: togetherness, community, connection, service, altruism, and more. It puts our personal challenges into perspective and simultaneously offers us tangible, actionable proof of our own goodness that stands in contrast to our negative self-judgments.

    It was hard for me to realize that my darkest shame spirals were also my most intensely self-indulgent moments. Even though I may have felt totally miserable, at the end of the day, it was still all about me: my wrongness, my badness, my words, my actions, my self-perceptions.

    When I mustered up the will to be of service, I was astounded by the serenity that came from relenquishing my role as the star of the show.

    Becoming a vessel for acts of goodwill opened my eyes to a greater, simpler reality, one I didn’t need to control or micromanage. From that vantage point, I was able to look back on my actions from a distance, and with that distance came the self-compassion, acceptance, and self-forgiveness I’d been hoping for all along.

  • What to Do with All the Feels That Pile Up in Your Heart

    What to Do with All the Feels That Pile Up in Your Heart

    Straight whiskey. That’s my drink of choice, or at least it’s one of them.

    Some nights I’ve kicked my heels up with a glass and sipped it slowly simply because I thought it sounded appealing.

    Other nights I’ve clutched my glass in a shaking hand with a sense of internal restlessness I couldn’t attribute to anything specific because I had no idea what I was feeling, or why.

    And on other nights still I have known what I was feeling and I’ve consciously chosen to drown it with Jim Beam, the buzz in my brain and the warmth in my chest distracting me from what I didn’t want to face.

    I thought about this recently after listening to an interview with Sarah Potenza, a singer/songwriter who you may know from season eight of The Voice.

    In the fourth episode of Next Creator Up—a podcast I’m producing with my partner in many things and show host Ehren Prudhel—Sarah talked about her experiences with body shamers and naysayers who convinced her she didn’t have what it takes to make it in the music industry.

    Though her whole interview spoke to me, because she has a larger than life personality and she’s all about self-acceptance, I was particularly drawn to what she had to say about releasing her pain onstage.

    Not only have her scars served as fuel for her music, the act of performing provides a sense of catharsis that makes her feel whole and at peace.

    She even noted that if she hasn’t performed in a while she feels like going to a bar and drinking—presumably because without an outlet to release her feelings, she’s tempted to stuff them down. But it’s clear from how she described it that releasing her feelings is a far superior option, and it doesn’t come with a hangover.

    “Performance, for me, is so much love but also so much anger. There’s so much passion on the stage in everything I’m doing that it just gets all of that out of my system. I scream it out, I sweat it out, I cry it out, I sing it out, I shout it out. It’s all out there whether it’s the love, the joy, the hate, the anger, the peace, the sorrow, everything. And I just throw it up all over everything, and I feel sated.” ~Sarah Potenza

    For me, it’s complicated. And I don’t mean it’s hard to explain. I mean the song, by Avril Lavigne.

    It’s among my top-five karaoke choices because I can spit the words out rhythmically as if with a machine gun larynx. I jump and belt with a guttural roar, and it’s like all the weight of the day drains out of me, one “fall” and “crawl” and “break” at a time.

    I’m loud and limber and alive, adrenaline pumping through my veins, washing away all residual pain in the intensity of the moment. I shout and it soothes me. I sweat and it cleanses me. It’s release and relief; it’s passion and peace.

    And when it’s over, all my emotions splayed out before me like tiny dust particles in the air I can’t see but know are there, I feel not empty but open. Open to joy, open to connection, open to possibilities, open to love.

    No glass of whiskey, however satisfying, has ever done that for me. In fact, it’s often done just the opposite. It’s closed my heart and filled me with sadness, as downers generally do. I lose control, the world in front of me blurred not beautified, and I feel not awakened but numb.

    I don’t want to feel numb. I want to feel sated not sedated.

    It’s easy to forget this, or to remember but deprioritize the things that make me come alive. They don’t feel productive, they’re not profitable, they don’t move the dial on my long-term goals. They may even feel frivolous, like wasting time, when I have so many other things to do.

    But I can’t do any good in this world if I’m a walking, ticking time bomb, ever-ready to scatter the shrapnel of my misdirected emotions.

    I need an outlet to work through it all—to feel, to heal, to release.

    We all do, every last one of us.

    We all need something that energizes us, fuels us, calms us, and soothes us, whether it’s creative or physical or both.

    And we need to do it regularly, as if our lives depended on it, because in a way, they do.

    Sure, we can exist in the world with feelings left unprocessed and unexpressed, but we’re only truly alive if we’re free. And we can’t be free when we’re repressed.

    So sing that song, belt it out, even if you’re off key. Dance as if no one’s watching, or someone is but you just don’t care. Paint, write, run, climb—do whatever gets you into a state of flow, and throw yourself so deep into it you lose track of time.

    Get out of your head, get into your heart, let yourself get everything out.

    And do it without guilt. If it heals and recharges you, it’s not wasting time. It’s making the most of it.

    —

    If you’re interested in checking out Sarah Potenza’s interview, you can find it here (and you can find all other interviews here). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

  • It’s Not “Failing” to Leave a Toxic, Abusive Marriage

    It’s Not “Failing” to Leave a Toxic, Abusive Marriage

    “Forgive yourself for not knowing better at the time. Forgive yourself for giving away your power. Forgive yourself for past behaviors. Forgive yourself for the survival patterns and traits you picked up while enduring trauma. Forgive yourself for being who you needed to be.” ~Audrey Kitching

    I have always been an extremely glass-half-full kind of person. I always see the best in everyone, and not only the best but also the unlimited beauty and potential. And my god, it’s glorious!!

    I met and fell in love with a charming man. I was on a trip to Alaska to visit a lifelong friend and met Mr. Wonderful at a gathering. He was attentive, charismatic, and made me feel like a queen. I was hooked. We were married four months later, and five months after that I had my second daughter.

    I didn’t see the red flags. Looking back, I ask myself how I could have been so naïve, so trusting, so blind. Slowly but surely, though, my world changed.

    First, it was little things, like coming out to check on me at night when I was breast pumping milk to see what “I was up to.” Then there was the name-calling and shaming if I wanted to dress up and go out with friends to a dinner. I wondered if other wives got called sluts too because they would wear a pretty shirt.

    There came a day when it became difficult to see the beauty in myself, and in him. Everything changed that day. And it never was able to return back to how it was before. The person that had vowed to love me, to cherish me, to protect me, and be there for me cut me to the core with words that will never be undone.

    “Nobody else will ever want you,” he sneered, his eyes filled with scorn and disgust. “A mother with kids from two different dads,” he chuckled to himself. “You are a slut, a whore, a sperm depository.”

    I curled up on the floor, in the fetal position, feeling as though he had stabbed me with a knife in the gut. I was sobbing, but I don’t remember hearing the sound.

    “Why are you saying this?” I gasped.

    “I read your journal,” he yelled, referring to an entry about my past lovers, as if that justified his cruelty.

    Stress does strange things to a person. I had recently broken out in painful boils on the left side of my torso and under my arms. They were excruciating. It hurt to lower my arm all the way down.

    “You are a fat, lazy, boil-infested bitch.”

    I remember at that moment shutting down. Going inward. A part of me disconnected in order to stay alive.

    Days turned into weeks. I felt myself dying inside a little more every day. I became withdrawn, and as time went on it took more and more energy to smile and pretend life was normal.

    Many friends didn’t understand. I remember them having shocked looks. “But I thought you were happily married,” one said, seemingly unable to comprehend the nightmare that had become my life.

    I gave up trying to talk about it, to explain. I felt it was my fault. Somehow I had attracted this, and perhaps somehow I could make him happy if I just did the right things and earned enough “Brownie points”—if, for example, I stayed home from social events and remained “on duty” with our baby all the time. Eventually I learned there were never Brownie points. Nothing seemed to make him pleased.

    One evening, he became angry with my older daughter, who was born blind in one eye, and called her a Cyclops. I remember wrapping one arm around my sobbing daughter while trying to bounce a baby on my hip. I was so exhausted from sleep deprivation and postpartum depression, it was all I could do to stay standing.

    I had never felt so alone, so isolated, so hopeless.

    I got the children settled to sleep, and I made a choice that night that I was finished.

    The next few days were a blur of his hateful and cruel remarks, as he knew I would not take him back; it was truly over. I knew I had to take a stand for myself, and if not me, for my children. They deserved better. I knew I did too, but I couldn’t see it at that time.

    It has been five years since we separated. I am resilient, and for that I am grateful.

    I am still an optimist, and I still see the beauty in everyone. I take a pause now, though, and I evaluate situations more carefully. My trust takes much more time to be earned now than it did eight years ago when I fell in love too fast, without knowing the real person behind the charming facade.

    Many people, including my parents, were disappointed in my failed marriage. Many sent prayers that it would be healed. For a long while, I felt like a failure.

    I have come to realize there is no shame in ‘failing’ in a marriage, especially if that marriage is toxic and harmful to your soul. I appreciate those thoughts and well-intended prayers, but at the end of the day, an abusive person who is not willing to self-reflect is not likely to change. The best thing to do at that point is to extricate yourself while you have the strength to do so.

    Recovering from trauma takes time. It has taken a lot of courage to look at my vulnerabilities and why I attracted such a relationship in the first place. This doesn’t mean I blamed myself. I just recognized that I had a strong need to feel loved and accepted, even if I was in an unhealthy situation, because I never felt loved and accepted as a child.

    It’s taken half a lifetime, but I’ve finally learned that everything I need is inside myself. I am complete on my own.

    Still, I have to work almost daily at forgiving, acting with grace, and ensuring that I am not compromising my needs or my right to be treated with dignity and respect in order to make him happy. I am still learning to stand my ground and expect respectful treatment when it comes to co-parenting.

    I will forever be grateful to the supportive network of family, friends, and a counselor who saw me through that incredibly rough time. A broken heart, shattered self-esteem, and deep postpartum depression did not disappear overnight.

    With the bravery it takes to self-reflect and learn from what appears to be a very unfortunate circumstance comes unparalleled growth. The self-forgiveness opens up opportunities for deeper self-love and self-compassion, and a much deeper understanding of my own humanness and how my past shaped me.

    But with time, self-love, self-forgiveness, and self-acceptance, I am a stronger and more empowered person today in spite of that experience. I am a phoenix, transformed by the fire. I will continue to see the beauty and unlimited potential in people, and I still choose to see the glass as half full. I do daily forgiveness work for myself and choose to move forward with love and grace, honoring my journey and my experience for what I have learned.