Tiny Buddha

Tag: loss

  • How to Heal from Heartbreak and Allow Love into Your Life

    How to Heal from Heartbreak and Allow Love into Your Life

    Open Up to Love

    “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” ~Marianne Williamson

    Love terrifies me.

    After having loved, courted, and married the love of my life, things went sour. Over the course of a few years, our marriage crumbled and our relationship came to a sudden halt.

    When you’ve only been with one person, loved that person to the core, and believed that person to be your soul mate, you take the breakup unusually hard.

    Yes, tears. Yes, sorrow. Yes, seclusion. Yes, withdrawal. Yes, not wanting to get out of bed.

    I experienced every symptom of heartbreak to its bitter end. The breakup was like a tsunami in my calm life.

    Over these last couple years of healing, I’ve found it difficult to let down the walls protecting my heart and find the courage to trust someone new.

    I’ve had to actively take steps to overcome my fears of love.

    Here are six ways to remove the protective walls around your heart and permit love to bloom in your life.

    1. Make peace with the past.

    In order to move on from heartbreak, you have to be willing to let go of all that has happened. Yes, you shared a lot together. Yes, it all meant something. And yes, it was supposed to have lasted a lifetime.

    But things don’t always work out the way you want them to. You simply cannot control all the circumstances that unfold in your life.

    People make mistakes. Your ex may not have been mature yet, not fully conscious or developed as a person, or they didn’t know who they were at the time. They may not have had enough life experiences or enough emotional maturity.

    You cannot hold onto grudges, inequities, and resentment toward them because of what happened in the past. As difficult as you may find it, you have to let go and forgive.

    There are a couple of ways to do this: first, take responsibility for your part in the relationship; and second, try to empathize with your ex. Try to consider where they might have been at that point in their life, understand their shortcomings, and extend compassion toward them.

    To heal, go through the grieving process and try to let go of the past. Don’t let this movie continue to play in your mind like a scary horror flick. Imagine this relationship as a film you’ve already seen and don’t allow it to replay repeatedly in your mind, scarring you for life.

    Also, be grateful for the good times you shared and the lessons of the past relationship.

    2. Nurture and show yourself compassion.

    After you let go of the resentment and heartache, take care of yourself.

    It’s easy to beat yourself up and blame yourself for your shortcomings, faults, and your role in the breakup.

    You’re not perfect. But think about how much you’re growing and learning about yourself. No one else in the world other than this past intimate life partner could have helped you grow so much.

    Be grateful for the insights about yourself you’ve gained. Treat yourself in a healthy and positive way.

    Eat better. Get back to exercising. Go back to those yoga classes and meditation practices. Read books on healing and growth. Sleep more. Relax more. Allow for more downtime in your life.

    Treat yourself as well as you would treat someone you cared a great deal about.

    3. Share your pains and sorrow.

    A big mistake I made during my healing was isolating myself from everyone I knew. I was embarrassed and in pain.

    I’ve since found out that not sharing with others was a heavy and toxic behavior. Keeping it all in was too much to bear.

    I initially started seeing a counselor, then started sharing my experiences with acquaintances and colleagues at work. Over time, I eventually shared my pain with friends and family.

    The sooner you share with others, the easier you’ll find your journey back to healing.

    You’ll also find yourself being much more vulnerable than ever before. This can be scary, but you’ll soon find that all the falsities and insecurities about yourself will fall away.

    In the process of becoming vulnerable, you’ll start getting to your core, your real self. You’ll find that it’s in this honest place that your true power lies.

    People want to be there for you during this difficult time. Make space for them to do it.

    4. Seek love in other parts of your life.

    Even if you’re not ready for a romantic relationship right now, allow love to come in from other parts of your life.

    Spend more time with friends and people you genuinely care about and love.

    Pursue those hobbies that make your heart sing, and do those activities that make you feel good.

    Try to infuse as much of your day with love. Eliminate activities, people, and tasks that constrict your soul.

    Schedule loving and feel-good activities into your calendar. You’ll start noticing how your internal positive vibrations will spill over to external positive circumstances.

    The more love you cultivate in your life, the more love you’ll see around you.

    5. Sit with the beliefs that scare you.

    The way to deal with your fears of dating and loving again is to confront all the many negative beliefs that will pop up in your mind. There will be many of them.

    The opposite sex is no good. People will only hurt you. You were not made for love. You are unlovable. You don’t have the ability to love. You’re broken. Your past made you this way.

    If these misguided beliefs come up, acknowledge them and sit with them.

    Ask yourself if these beliefs are real or a result of past negative experiences. Do your beliefs apply to everyone? Have others been able to find love and compatible relationships?

    Are your beliefs based on truth or your deepest fears?

    Question your beliefs. Challenge them. Or simply sit with them and allow questions about these false beliefs to come up.

    By sitting with your fear-based beliefs and considering alternative ones, you’ll realize that your fears will have less power over you over time.

    If sitting is too passive of an exercise for you, test your beliefs with friends who have had positive experiences with love and relationships. Permit them to help you shift your beliefs and perspectives on love.

    6. Continue practicing small acts of courage in opening your heart.

    To love again and open up again is a challenge after a heart-crushing breakup. When your heart has been ripped out and your broken relationship feels like shattered glass, it’s hard to trust again.

    It’s hard to believe again. It’s hard to open up yourself again.

    It can’t be done overnight but it can be done through small steps and over time.

    It can start by saying “hello” to the next person who greets you.

    It can mean returning a smile.

    It can mean saying “yes” to coffee and not filling up your mind with dozens of reasons why coffee with this person is a bad idea.

    It can mean saying “yes” to a blind date.

    And it means saying “yes” to someone who wants to introduce you to someone who they think is a great match for you.

    Take tiny steps of saying “yes” when your heart screams “no.”

    You might believe that no amount of pleasure or happiness is worth the pain and suffering you’ve endured. You can’t afford the emotional, psychological, and mental games another ruined relationship is going to bring your way.

    I get it. I’ve been there and wallowed in that place for a long time. Ultimately, I realized we have only two choices: be a prisoner of our heartbreak or break free and chose to re-write our story on love.

    Love is possible if you make a choice to do the work to open up your heart again. You’ve come a long way. You’re more knowledgeable about yourself, smarter about relationships, more savvy about love, and better able to handle changes.

    Your heart can break open into a satisfying and fulfilling relationship. Past darkness can open up to the most brilliant light.

    Open your heart to the possibilities of new beginnings and more joy.

    Man at heart window image via Shutterstock

  • Healing from Heartbreak and Loving Life, No Matter Your “Status”

    Healing from Heartbreak and Loving Life, No Matter Your “Status”

    Happy Woman

    “Getting over a past relationship is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point to move forward.” ~C.S. Lewis

    I recently stumbled into a clothing store where everything was full of life and color, until I saw the sales clerk.

    She had obviously been crying. I perused the merchandise and hesitatingly asked her a question about an item. Tears welled up in her eyes and she said, “I’m sorry, I’m so overwhelmed. My boyfriend just broke up with me.”

    I wasn’t prepared for that answer, but as I looked at her more closely I saw my former self in her eyes.

    I had, in fact, been that same heartbroken girl a few years back. I can still picture my ex-boyfriend standing in his driveway just before the July 4th holiday, me with tears in my eyes. He simply said, “I’m sorry, I can’t be what you want” and got into his car to drive off to the beach.

    Talk about devastation. I felt paralyzed, thinking, who will love me now? How can I continue life without being part of a relationship? What is my status?

    It took a while, but I did manage to get through that hurt. Here are some of the small steps that I took to learn how to love my life, regardless of being single or in a relationship.

    Give yourself a period to grieve, and then set an alarm to get moving again.

    Just like the sales clerk, I cried until my eyes were blurry. I refused to see my friends and family, and I sent every phone call straight to voicemail. I even stopped eating because I lost my appetite.

    That was okay for the first three days, but then I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that it was time to start functioning again. So, I literally set an alarm clock and chose the date and time that I would pick myself up off of my couch and return to the land of the living.

    Obviously, relationships take time to heal and we have every right to mourn their endings, but once the grief consumes us to the point that we lose productivity, there is a danger of it leading into a much darker place, or even a depression.

    So when that alarm went off I got up, took a shower, got dressed, and decided that even if I simply made it to the grocery store that day, or took a walk in the park, it was better for me than sitting home to sulk.

    Of course, I still had bouts of tears and got down at times, but at least I was out of a place where I would solely focus on my pain. After a while my grief was still there, but it began to lessen.

    Find a cause that captures your heart and throw yourself into helping.

    I always wanted to adopt a dog, so I sought out a pet rescue organization online and adopted my very own dog. She was a handful, and the first week alone she broke out of her crate, howled all night long, and needed to be walked every fifteen minutes.

    I was exhausted, but prioritizing her needs above mine forced me to stop concentrating on my problems. Occasionally, I sent the rescue organization photos to show how well she was progressing, and they asked me to write an article for their newsletter.

    Before I knew it, I was volunteering my marketing skills to post Facebook and Twitter updates about adoption events, collecting old bed sheets and towels for other animals in need, and advising other families on pet rescue. To this day, that is the cause that captured my heart and helped me to become a passionate advocate of pet rescue.

    Be open to the power of saying “yes.” 

    As much as I was embarrassed at my newfound single status, I wondered what would happen if I decided to embrace the break-up as if I had chosen it. Then I made a decision to accept social invitations and say “yes” whenever possible.

    I had a blast that summer! My days and nights were full of activities ranging from dog park meet-ups to planning an art exhibition, learning to plant flower boxes, and doing country karaoke at a local dive bar. Suddenly, I loved the power and thrill of saying “yes,” because I never knew where it would lead.

    A couple of years later, my neighbor invited me and seven of her friends (none of whom I knew) on a girls weekend trip. I said “sure, what the heck?” That same weekend I ended up meeting my current boyfriend, and I eventually relocated from Boston to Miami.

    Now we live together with his children and my rescue dog is our family pet. If you have a little faith in the unknown and are open to saying yes, you never know what path it can take you down.

    Take your ego out of your hurt to make an “I” statement.

    Oftentimes, at the end of relationships we over-analyze them, letting our egos get in the way, and asking ourselves, “What could I have done to make him/her stay?” or “What qualities didn’t I have that he/she wanted?”

    Try writing every question down that you still have about the relationship. Then re-phrase it from your point-of-view. For example, my ex-boyfriend said, “I can’t be what you want,” so I wrote down “Can he be what I want in a boyfriend?”

    Doing so made it so obvious to me that we fell into a relationship where we were simply going with the flow. I realized that I wanted a partner who was seeking a long-term commitment and wasn’t afraid to verbalize that up-front.

    In changing my outlook on my past relationship I eventually got to spend time getting to know and falling in love with my own life. Regardless of if I am single or with a partner, my relationship status no longer defines me, and that is freeing.

    Happy woman in the rain image via Shutterstock

  • Finding a Window of Opportunity When Life Closes a Door

    Finding a Window of Opportunity When Life Closes a Door

    Man Looking Out Window

    “Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” ~John Wooden

    “Why don’t you just take up swimming?” the doctor asked.

    I was twenty years old, single-minded in my pursuit of a dance career, visiting yet another doctor about the vicious tendinitis that had forced me to give up my spot at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City.

    What the doctor didn’t understand is that dance isn’t just a sporting activity; it’s a way of life, an identity.

    Telling a young dancer to “just take up swimming” is about as helpful as telling a woman receiving treatment for infertility to “just take up knitting.”

    Needless to say, I didn’t follow the doctor’s advice. Instead, I spent a good five years on the quest for the miracle cure, hopping from doctor to doctor, from treatment to treatment.

    Life went on, I graduated from college, I got a job, but in many ways I was stuck. I couldn’t really invest myself in anything else, because surely I might be able to start dancing again at any moment, and I refused to do anything that might jeopardize that possibility.

    As a result, I lived my life in a sort of painful limbo.

    I was unable to dance, but I was unable to move on either. Dance was like a bad lover who never truly cared for me, but kept me on a string, waiting in the wings, sighing my life away.

    Thankfully, I eventually did move on. It took about five years, but I finally accepted that a career as a dancer was not in the cards, and though I had to grieve this loss, once the fog of grief cleared, I found to my surprise that my chances for happiness had not died along with my dream of being a dancer.

    Perhaps it was my youthful naiveté that led me to believe that dance was my one and only passion. Perhaps I was influenced by the false, but sadly very prevalent, notion that we each have only one soul mate for all of time.

    Whatever the reason, I truly believed that I’d burned through my one shot at passion, and that I was destined to live the rest of my life in black and white.

    (This may sound overly dramatic, but remember, I was barely out of adolescence at the time, and young people do tend to be dramatic.)

    Just a few years after I decided to move on from dance, not long after getting married, I discovered a love of calligraphy and making things with my hands. Lo and behold, it turned out I wasn’t limited to one passion after all! I became just as passionate about art as I’d ever been about dance, and even started a business selling my art.

    Then my marriage fell apart. During the painful year of my divorce, now that my tendinitis had finally cleared up, I started going out salsa dancing for fun, and I discovered that lost things sometimes come back.

    Yes, I’d lost my dream of a dance career, but it felt like dance was being given back to me, in a new form.

    Now I had not one, but two passions: art and salsa dancing!

    The Universe has a wicked sense of humor, though, and a year into my salsa mania, a new foot injury flared up. I could barely walk, let alone go out salsa dancing. Once again, the thing I loved to do was barred from me.

    This time around, though, things were different. This time, I didn’t hang around in limbo.

    I still got to have my art, for one thing, but I didn’t settle for that alone. Some friends had taken me to see Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco for my thirty-fourth birthday (imagine Cirque du Soleil plus a five-course meal) and I had been transfixed by the aerial artists.

    “I want to do that!” I thought. And instead of putting the idea on a shelf (as I had with so many other ideas in my life), I thought, “Heck, why not? If I can’t dance on the ground, I will dance in the air!”

    They say that when the Universe closes a door, it opens a window, and I leaped through that window! I found a circus school about an hour away, enrolled in an aerial arts class, and for the next year I did dance in the air.

    What a difference from the first time I lost dance!

    The first time, I refused to accept how things worked out. I admire my persistence, but I must say it didn’t lead to happiness.

    I don’t have any regrets about how things turned out, but I sometimes wonder how things might have been different if, instead of just doggedly aiming down a path that no longer existed, I had also kept my eyes open for an alternate path.

    What if, for example, I had discovered aerial arts at twenty instead of thirty-four? What if I had opened my mind to the possibility of a completely different passion?

    Of course, that’s exactly what happened eventually anyway.

    Eventually the crappy things that happened in my life fertilized some rich harvests; I just spent a lot of miserable years first.

    It’s not always easy to move on. It’s not always easy to see the windows that the Universe opens after closing a door. Processing a loss happens in its own time, and it cannot be rushed.

    What I’ve learned, though, is that I’ve been happier when I’ve made the best of how things work out. When I’ve made the best of what was in front of me, things have always rather miraculously worked out.

    With an open mind (and a liberal dose of patience and self-compassion), the worst things in my life have alchemized into unexpected gold.

    It can be hard to keep an open mind when things go terribly wrong, but the happiest people do just that. Challenging as it is, I know it has done me immeasurable good to let go of my attachment of how I think things “should” be.

    This, if you think about it, is the ultimate dance: dancing with the Universe. Whatever tempo or style of music it throws at you, our job is to make the best of it, say yes, and take a spin around the floor.

    Is there a place in your own life where things have worked out differently from how you wanted? How might you turn the crappy things in your own life into a rich harvest?

    Man at window image via Shutterstock

  • Letting Go of the Past So You Can Be Reborn

    Letting Go of the Past So You Can Be Reborn

    Reborn

    “In the end what matters most is: How well did you live? How well did you love? How well did you learn to let go?” ~Unknown

    In a matter of days, it was all gone: the role in a company I adored, the future I had imagined, and our friend Max, so loved by all who knew him.

    The loss washed over me in a sudden gust. I was being called to begin again, to re-examine what I thought was important. And, in facing the feelings that arose with being stripped abruptly of these attachments, the inessential was forced to fall away, bowing to the essential.

    Re-birth can sound so majestic, so beautiful. It can signify a time of starting fresh, of being conjured anew, of creating a blank page for the future. Flowers are born anew each spring, butterflies born from their cocoons.

    The scent of re-birth can imply blue skies and endless vast horizons. Everything is suddenly awoken, stirring with possibility.

    But re-birth does not always occur as the delicate unfolding of blossoming petals. Sometimes, it entails the unnerving shriek of the phoenix consumed by the flames. Sometimes, it’s the pressure from the heat that turns coal into diamonds.

    Often, we must taste the darkness of death before we can rise from the ashes with a strength and courage we did not even know we had, until it was tested.

    In this experience of loss, I was initially distraught for days—brought to my knees as the figurative tower of everything I was building with all my heart and soul crumbled around me. Pieces of rubble showered me with a deep reality check, a wake up call.

    Part of me was angry, and tempted to launch into more “doing” to “prove myself” and to begin rebuilding immediately and swiftly so as to “undo” the loss.

    But that denial could not last long. Instead, I had to accept and be with the grief of what was gone, and surrender to the new task of letting my life speak to me and through me, rather than trying so hard to dictate all my days.

    When we cling to things, we struggle. When we grasp at what we desire, we suffocate it. When we identify with a laundry list of accomplishments, we always fall short in the end.

    You may have heard the saying “We are human beings, not human doings.” Living is a balance of both: centering yourself in who you are, and then expressing that core self through what you do in the world, as you grow within it.

    Our focus can so often be on the externals that we get caught up in the scramble to achieve and forget what is really important, what truly defines us.

    When our friend Max passed, people did not honor the castles he’d built, or the deeds he’d done. They honored the spirit of immense life and joy that he embodied, lived, and spread through being fully himself in every moment.

    They remembered how deliciously Max dreamed, how immensely he believed, and how sweetly he treated everyone around him.

    In death, we have the chance to appreciate and glorify the best in others; but why wait until then? Why not uplift each other and magnify our gifts while we are here, together, in this crazy beautiful flesh?

    In every moment, we have the chance to taste the fragility of life in death, and choose to re-invent ourselves through becoming re-born again and again and again.

    But first you must transform anything that does not serve, you must release what you hold on to so tightly, you must agree to melt.

    In truth, when the caterpillar goes into its cocoon, it actually proceeds to dissolve into a pool of atoms. It lets go of its old form and completely comes undone. That is how it reconfigures itself and transforms into its next glorious form as a butterfly.

    In my own life, I have taken a pause from re-creating. I know re-birth will come, and that soon it will be time to fly again. But before that, I immerse myself in the process of bowing with humility and utmost surrender, listening to the wisdom in the silence.

    It is time to re-evaluate all prior priorities, coming into closer contact with the values, people, and experiences I cherish, and looking for the beauty in the stillness, in the amorphous puddle of “not-knowing.”

    If you’re also dealing with loss and undergoing transition, can you release your attachments? Can you let go of what “things” and “titles” you identify with, those things you think define you, that really won’t matter in the end?

    Can you melt into ultimate love, into the powerful grace of knowing that you are both nothing and everything at once, a single drop in the powerful ocean of life, still shining as bright as the pinprick of a star?

    Can you let go, let go, let go, knowing that soon, when you are ready, it will be time to rise and soar?

    Man in stars image via Shutterstock

  • Can You Make Your Brain Fall Out of Love?

    Can You Make Your Brain Fall Out of Love?

    “Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter.” ~Unknown

    A long time ago now, but once I was in a relationship that was full of great passion and hot desire, but it was also addictive, distracting, and destructive.

    When I noticed that it was ultimately bad for me, I knew I had to “get out.” So, I went cold turkey, as they say, and broke up, thinking I would be able to handle it.

    Unfortunately, it was much harder than I thought it would be. Every morning I woke up and found myself in the midst of some sort of insanity; my mind and body were filled with thoughts about him.

    My mind just wouldn’t stop racing about all that had happened, what I could have said differently, what I could have done differently, what could have happened differently. I lived with this for months and it was a daily dose of hell.

    It was at this time, however, that I enrolled to study as a hypnotherapist. When you train to become a therapist, you learn to treat different conditions.

    Usually, we had our teacher describing and explaining a therapeutic technique, and then he demonstrated the technique on one of us, which was followed by each of us practicing on each other.

    (By the time we had finished the degree, we cured all of each other’s phobias and bad habits, until none was left. This was quite a journey of self-development!)

    Soon the day came when the topic was “Suggested Amnesia,” a technique to “erase” unwanted memories. I volunteered immediately, ready to let go of all it all.

    The experience was nothing like you would imagine as some cold-war brainwash type of hypnosis.

    During the whole procedure, I didn’t lose any of my awareness. At the end, I didn’t lose any of my factual memories, either. But the memory of my tormenting relationship, previously so eminently on my mind, became a dim and vague residue memory as a result of the procedure.

    The amnesia worked on the emotional level. The edge of my thinking, which made my life so hellish, was gone. Actually, it taught my brain to fall out of love!

    The scientifically interesting background of this experience is about the nature of memory. Since the age of information technology, we tend to think of memory as a kind of data in our brain, which is either stored (remembered) or not (forgotten).

    Information is stored in our brain like on a computer, which can be kept on file or erased. Interestingly enough, however, newest psychological experiments show that the analogy for memory as a data bank is not quite accurate.

    Memory is not a piece of information from the past simply stored in our brain. Rather, all past events have created imprints on our mind, but those imprints are not static. Our mind constantly works with them and constantly changes memories as its current thinking changes.

    Memory is formable. You can change past memories by changing your present state of mind.

    How is this possible? Memories are formed as neurological connections in the brain: a certain sequence of connections is fired when the event is happening and later recalled.

    The same happens during imagination. When you close your eyes and visualize whatever you want, you’re actually creating new neurological pathways. This means that memory and imagination are created on the same neurological level and therefore one can override the other.

    You can try a little experiment. Close your eyes for a minute and think of a person you had a bad experience with.

    With your eyes shut, recall the memory of that negative experience. Make it as real as you can: see it like a colorful movie on your mind. See what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt at that time.

    Don’t make it too long, just long enough that you can open your eyes and notice the negative feeling coming up with the memory.

    After that, close your eyes again. Bring back the last scene of the same movie on your mind, but this time turn the colors black and white, play it backward, and start to shrink the size of the whole picture, until it’s nothing but a tiny dot that disappears into the vast blackness behind your eyelids. Gone.

    After that, start to make a new movie, completely out of your imagination, in which the same situation with the same person has a positive outcome.

    Maybe the person says something different, or you do, as long as at the end you can see the “enemy” person smiling at you, shaking hands, perhaps even giving you a hug (if that’s within your comfort zone).

    After you have effectively created the movie, open your eyes and observe how you feel. You should feel less negative toward this person, neutral, or perhaps even positive.

    The difference between your emotions following the first (memory) and the second movie (imagination) is due to new neurological pathways you have created in your mind.

    After my experience at the hypnotherapy course, my whole obsession with being “in love” completely changed.

    I no longer had those morning thoughts that had previously tormented me for hours after awakening. I no longer had those memories flushing into my life seemingly out of control.

    It is sobering to think how much of what is happening to us is actually a product of our own mind. How often do we say, “Oh, I can’t help it … I’m like this … I’m like that,” while it is our own mind that is responsible for our emotional reactions—whether we are conscious of that or not.

    I felt great relief. For a moment, I also felt disillusionment. My story was about a broken relationship, but what about good relationships?

    “Programming” our minds to fall in and out of love, would that not deprive relationships of all poetry and beauty? Are those happy, loving, and promising relationships also nothing more than connections in our brain?

    Of course not, I reminded myself. True love is not generated by our brain; it is a matter of our heart. Luckily, no amount of research, science, and therapy will ever change that.

    Woman in pain image via Shutterstock

  • How to Let Go of the Fear of Being Hurt Again

    How to Let Go of the Fear of Being Hurt Again

    Hiding in the Rain

    “Accept your past without regret, handle your present with confidence, and face your future without fear.” ~Unknown 

    My pet fish died today. Red-striped fins as beautiful as always, he was swimming around in his tank only four weeks ago. First he became less active. Next he refused to eat. Then he was gone.

    As I buried him in the yard, my first thought was, I don’t want to have a pet fish ever again. Awareness kicked in, and I realized that my thought was triggered by fear to experience an unpleasant circumstance such as this again.

    This is how our minds tend to work: After we go through a hurtful situation, we subconsciously avoid anything that we believe caused our pain. 

    This instinct of self-preservation can protect us from repeating mistakes and experiencing pain, but it can also prevent us from living life to the fullest.

    One of my friends accepted a job that required her to relocate often. After the fourth move, she decided it wasn’t worth it to make new friends in her new town. It seemed to be a less hurtful option to distance herself from others.

    Focused entirely on work and her immediate family, she stayed in touch with a few long-distance friends, such as me, but she admitted that she often felt something was missing in her life.

    My uncle swore to never have another dog after his fourteen-year-old Shih Tzu mix had to be put to sleep. He didn’t have to deal with the loss of another pet, but was still in mourning for his dead dog years after the event.

    After a traumatic experience with marriage, the mere thought of being in a new romantic relationship used to make me my physically ill. I didn’t want to get hurt again, so I would distrust everyone I met, which prevented me from welcoming new people into my life.

    That’s until I realized that my sense of self-preservation had become my biggest obstacle to create new meaningful connections.

    How do we let go of the fear of being hurt again and open our hearts and minds to what life has to offer?

    Contemplating the following truths has helped me and it might help you, too.

    A full life is made of a wide range of experiences, and some of these experiences will be unpleasant.

    Job situations change. People and pets become ill and die. Relationships end.

    Accepting that sometimes things won’t go your way will allow you to let go of the anxiety and stress that arise from resistance to your life circumstances. When you stop resisting, your mind is clear enough to find solutions to your problems.

    Avoidance based on fear will not protect you from experiencing pain.

    Why? Because living in fear is already living in pain. Instead of avoiding perceived sources of pain, seek sources of joy.

    When I focused on the character traits I wanted the people in my life to have, and adopted behaviors that reflected these qualities, I started to meet amazing beings who became trusted friends.

    Assuming responsibility for your unpleasant circumstances is a way to regain control of your life and to learn.

    Ask yourself how your thoughts and behaviors might have contributed to what happened to you. The past won’t repeat itself if you learn from the difficulty and assume control of your thoughts about the situation.

    And even if you feel that you didn’t play a role in the challenge you experienced, you can still take responsibility for your attitudes and feelings about what happened. You can choose to move on.

    My friend could choose to apply for a job that doesn’t require moving so often, or she could view relocation as an exciting opportunity to make friends all over the country.

    My uncle could cherish the memory of his previous pet by giving a new dog all the love and care that all creatures deserve.

    When I let go of my limiting thoughts, I started to see life under a different lens, and welcomed new people who were aligned with my values and appreciated me for who I was.

    The instinct of self-preservation is a powerful tool when combined with conscious awareness.

    Become aware of your negative thoughts as soon as they pop up, and assume the objective perspective of an observer. This will prevent you from being ruled by fear and will allow you to tap into your intuition.

    Allow yourself to learn from the past and then, let it go. Leave the hurt and the pain behind. Move forward so you can enjoy the unlimited, amazing abundance that life has to offer!

    Photo by Eddi van W.

  • How to Turn Pain into Strength and Wisdom

    How to Turn Pain into Strength and Wisdom

    River Man

    “The pain you feel today will be the strength you feel tomorrow.” ~Unknown

    Some would say that when it rains, it pours—a fitting statement for the events that have recently taken place in my life.

    In mid-September my life took an unexpected turn. My wife, to whom I had been married for only four months (having been together for six years prior), had been acting strangely toward me.

    She was suffering from fits of depression that would range from her sobbing on the couch to sitting by the fireplace, drinking heavily while listening to songs that would make your heart break into pieces.

    I did everything I could to try and get her through this depression—date nights, random events—but nothing seemed to work.

    Meanwhile, life wasn’t through drizzling on me.

    My grandmother was diagnosed with stage 4 heart failure and her time was short. This was going to be the first time that I would experience death in my family, so I was distraught over facing such a strenuous reality.

    To fear death is natural in human beings. It’s the only certainty that we face. “Challenging” would be an understatement to describe the hurricane that was bellowing in me.

    When my grandmother passed in early October, it was strange. I was extremely sad and yet happy to see she was no longer suffering. Then I felt guilty for feeling happy at all for her death.

    Having no control over my emotions was exhausting. I was at my weakest and I needed my wife to help me through it. Unfortunately, she was taking solitude in the comfort of another man.

    I caught her late at night talking to a coworker about how she longed for him, how she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She was surrounded by a graveyard of empty beer bottles and even more cigarette butts. I waited up all night for her to wake up from blacking out to explain her actions.

    When she woke and I confronted her, she yelled, “I’m bored with my marriage!” which floored me. Immediately, she begged and pleaded for me not to leave and promised that this would never happen again.

    I gave her several chances to prove that she would change her actions. Finally, at Christmas, after I moved out and all her chances expired, she admitted to sleeping with the coworker. It was over. Two weeks later I filed for divorce.

    With the final divorce hearing approaching, my grandfather (husband to my late grandmother) also passed away. For some reason, this news didn’t have the same impact on me as when my grandmother passed.

    Was it because I’d loved her more? Was it because I’d become heartless? Was it because of my impending divorce? Or was it because I had become so numb from everything that I finally reached a breaking point and collapsed emotionally? The answer to them all was no.

    It dawned on me as if waking from a dream. Learning to manage my emotions in the proper way, by allowing myself to embrace reality, gave me a strength that will define me for the future. I was becoming a new, empowered being.

    The rain had been thoroughly pounding me on the head. But now, I have learned, the rain was treating me like a flower, preparing me to bloom.

    I have become more adaptive to the painful emotions due to all of my experiences. That doesn’t mean I’m invulnerable to them—far from it, actually. It simply means that the knowledge I have now will allow me to face future challenges wisely.

    When life keeps giving you its toughest blows, it will help to:

    Fully experience your emotions.

    The largest mistake people make is masking their emotions. This is counterproductive and will lead to health problems in the future.

    When each emotion comes, feel it. Your body will tell you when it’s enough. Cry, scream, and cry again. Let it out and submit to the beginning of a process that will take time to complete. To feel is to be human, embrace it!

    Challenge your perspective.

    Life isn’t always going to be on a downward spiral. When it is, you can find ways to focus on the positive instead of the negative. Perspective plays a key role in acceptance. Here is what I used to help:

    In regards to my grandfather’s death, I told myself: He was a WWII vet and lived a full life for over nine decades; he wasn’t able to take care of himself and quality of life was lacking; and he was finally together with my grandmother again.

    In regards to my dissolving marriage, I told myself: I deserve better than how I was treated; there was nothing more I could do; and I was being dragged down to dangerous depths, and now I was free.

    Surround yourself with the right influences.

    During these times you’ll find out, like I did, that there are some people you can count on and some you can’t. Take this opportunity to weed out those in your life that may be holding you back.

    For those who have family and friends to lean on, use them. If you don’t have anyone to lean on, reach out to a therapist. I have a great therapist and family. I cherish them. If that doesn’t work, focus on building new positive relationships. I’ve made several new friends lately that have been a breath of fresh air in my life.

    Stay (or become) active and avoid negative coping mechanisms.

    It’s useless to focus all your energy on events that you no longer have control over. Instead of wasting time in this way, get active in your everyday life. See how you feel after a week of jogging for ten minutes a day. Jogging not your thing? Find something else. Get interested in an activity that gives you a spark.

    Meanwhile, if you are dealing with depression, sadness, or anger, stay away from alcohol and substances, which will only magnify your pain. You are not “drowning” your sorrows. Instead, you are providing them with fuel.

    Accept and forgive.

    Holding onto hatred and resentment only poisons you. It keeps you forever trapped in the past, focusing on an element that you’re letting define who you are today. Learn to let go.

    This is easier said than done, of course, and it’s not something that will happen overnight, either. The only way to truly learn to let go is let time heal. You’ll know when you get there.

    Accepting that life will eventually knock you hard on your rear is a stepping stone to growth. Constantly trying to avoid hardship and pain will only prove detrimental to you.

    Despite all the pain I experienced in a six-month timeframe, I now see this beautiful world we live in through an exciting new lens.

    Each experience, each moment that you have is precious and dear. I challenge you to make the best out of even the worst circumstances. Like me, you may be amazed at the power, wisdom, and strength you gain after maintaining a positive drive.

    Photo by Hartwig HKD

  • The Best Way to Help Someone Who’s Grieving (Including Yourself)

    The Best Way to Help Someone Who’s Grieving (Including Yourself)

    “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself.” ~Walter Anderson

    Yesterday marked the second anniversary of my stepmother passing away. I still remember that day vividly; I remember going to work like it was any other day, mulling over life, and then making my journey back home from work. As I walked into my apartment building I received the call from my dad to tell me the news.

    I went inside, got changed, laid on my bed, and sobbed for hours until my flatmate came home and consoled me.

    He then so thoughtfully drove me over to my sister’s place, as he knew I needed to be with my family, and still to this day I am in gratitude to him, as I was in shock and didn’t know what I needed at that point in time.

    The topic of grief is very close to my heart for a few reasons, partly because my family and I experienced grief in so many different forms over the past two years, because I am still in the process of grieving the loss of a relationship, and also because I don’t think it is talked about openly often enough.

    Grief is looked at as this icky, foreign, forbidden feeling when it is a perfectly normal part of life, and something that almost every person has or will experience in this lifetime.

    While different people experience grief in different ways, there are universal themes that we can all relate to, such as the feeling of loss, hurt, and anger; and I am passionate about people feeling and being supported through the grieving process.

    Yesterday I watched a beautiful video on dealing with grief, and the parts that resonated with me the most were around the concept of dealing with and accepting grief, and also how to be there for someone who is grieving.

    When someone experiences grief, whether through the death of someone, or the loss of a relationship, job, or pet, there is no such thing as dealing with it or coming to terms with it.

    The reality is, we actually don’t ever fully accept it or come to terms with it because we feel that if we accept it, that makes it okay.        

    Sometimes we portray to the outside world that we are okay, happy, and dealing with it just fine when, in fact, we might not be. The world wants to see that we are doing okay and getting our “mojo” back because if we’re okay, that makes everybody else feel okay because they don’t have to see us in pain. And ah, the sigh of relief they can breathe.

    Flowing on from this is the topic of how we can help someone who is grieving.

    When someone we know is grieving, our natural human instinct is to try to cheer them up because we don’t want to see our nearest and dearest in pain.

    However, in essence, what we are actually doing is invalidating how that person feels (unintentionally) because we want them to feel better.

    I know from recent personal experience there have been times when I have wanted, needed to talk about my grief to friends and family but have felt forced to suppress it because of the discomfort it may extend onto other people.

    It’s as though there’s a big elephant in the room, which everybody knows is there, but doesn’t feel comfortable enough to look in the eye.

    The most supportive and kindest thing we can do when we know someone who is grieving is to be with their grieving.

    So often we try to change how they are feeling, distract them from the pain, or cheer them up, but the best thing we can do, as a supporter, is to just be with them, however they show up on the day.

    Sometimes this might mean they want to see you, sometimes they might not, and other times they might want to be surrounded by as many people as possible.

    Allow it, don’t fight it, and be okay with seeing that person in pain; you are giving them the gift of healing by doing this.

    Focus on compassion, humility, and presence.

    In times of grief, I encourage you to show up as your authentic self, which in turn gives others the permission to do the same, whether we are the griever or the supporter.

    Whatever the catalyst for your grief, it absolutely must be expressed rather than supressed, whether the loss occurred yesterday, last month, or last year.

    The painful and harsh reality is that we will never get back what we had, but eventually we will form a new normal, and we form that new normal as an expanded version of ourselves.

    Allowing ourselves to go through the grieving process and express whatever emotions arise is a truly beautiful thing, because what’s on the other side of that grief is the ability to see the blessing and lesson; we begin to see the gift of this life we have been left to live and the sheer importance of making every day count.

    So, if I may, I’d like to leave you with this.

    How are you going to make today count, this moment, and this very minute?

  • The Stage of Grief You’ve Never Heard of But May Be Stuck In

    The Stage of Grief You’ve Never Heard of But May Be Stuck In

    “Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

    Since I was a little girl I have believed in the power of wishes. I’ve never missed a first star, a dandelion plume, or load of hay (load of hay, load of hay, make a wish and turn away) to express to the universe my deepest desires.

    When I was fifteen and my dad was at the end stages of cancer, I would wish on the first star, not to save him, but to plead a peaceful end. Since my oldest son passed away very unexpectedly in October of 2010, I have made hundreds of wishes to remember every detail I can about the boy who was the other half of my heart.

    In the three years since Brandon’s death, I believe my wish to keep his memory alive have been answered by learning to turn my “whys” into “hows.”

    Asking “why” isn’t one of the official stages of grief, but maybe it should be. Anger and denial get all the attention, while getting stuck in the “why” freezes you in your tracks and prevents any opportunity for growth or movement toward healing.

    Not being able to let go of needing to know “why” forces you to focus on the rear view mirror. It keeps you in the past and prevents you from living in a way that honors the person or thing you have lost.

    It’s in my nature to ask why. “Why” can be a powerful question that leads to clarity and progress. It can also be a roadblock in the one-way traffic of life.

    Life doesn’t come with reverse, only neutral and various speeds of forward progress. “Why” firmly plants us in neutral, and that’s where I was in the months after Brandon’s death.

    I obsessed over the “why.” My brain whirled at sonic speed looking for it. I assumed if I found the “why,” I would find comfort and would be able to pick up the pieces and move on. I came up with elaborate theories of why Brandon died.

    Brandon was home on leave from the Army when he passed away, but was scheduled to be deployed within the next few months. I spun that into my favorite “why theory,” that dying at home saved him some horrible combat death in Afghanistan.

    It made me feel better, briefly, but I was still left with the bigger question that would never be answered—why did it have to happen at all?

    “What’s your why?” has become a motivational catch phrase. I remember seeing an inspirational quote on Pinterest after Brandon died, with a picture of a scantily clad, fit chick with “What’s your why?” typed beneath her sculpted abs. I shouted at her in the quiet of my room to eff-off—my “why” died!

    “What’s your why?” sounds absurd to the grieving person, and it’s not comforting!

    Not only had my “why” died, I also found myself pleading with the universe for the explanation to “why this happened. “Why” is a question with no answer when it comes to loss. “Why” offers more questions than comfort.

    Another word that isn’t included in the official grief process, but again, I think it should be, is “how.” “How” explores possibilities. “How” shines a light into the future. Exploring “how” to live a life that honors the memory of my son made my wishes come true.

    After realizing being stuck in “why” would never ease the pain of losing him, I began to realize that how I live the rest of my life is the outward manifestation of my son’s spirit.

    It is the only way anyone will ever get to know my son, and the only way I can keep his memory alive. If I continued to live in the “why,” I would diminish his memory, but by living in the “how” I magnify his memory by my actions.

    It doesn’t make the grief go away; rather, it ignites my grief as a powerful vessel for change.

    My “how” is manifested in cultivating a life of adventure and using radical self-care to ensure that I have the energy to embrace a life that reflects Brandon’s best qualities.

    It is a labor of love for my son that I embrace life, take risks, be courageous, pay it forward, and act in a way that makes people ask what I’ve been smoking. My actions are how I keep the memory of my son alive; it is how my wish has been granted.

    If you or a loved one is stuck in the “why,” let it go—it simply doesn’t exist. It’s time to live in the “how.”

  • Let Go of Regret by Making a Promise to Yourself

    Let Go of Regret by Making a Promise to Yourself

    Let Go

    “Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown

    Regret can be such a paralyzing emotion, yet it is also universal. At some point in our lives, in one way or another, we each wrestle with regret.

    Regret seems to rear its ugly head most when it comes to relationships. It happens when a relationship ends and we feel as if we could have done something more. This feeling intensifies when the other person decides that a second chance is not worth the fight. Most of all, we face with regret once it sets in that the past is just that—the past.

    Almost one year ago to the day, I lost the man that I thought I would spend the rest of my life with.

    At age twenty-eight, after two years of living together, I watched him slam the door on our apartment. My own anxiety and depression led me to keep things inside, secrets, and this slowly built a wall in between us, so thick that we could no longer see each other.

    My own anxiety and need for reassurance or praise clouded my head so badly that I could not even notice that he saw right though me. And anytime he tried to get me to open up, I would convince myself that he was the enemy.

    We were no longer a team working together; we had become opponents working against each other.

    I had created my own nightmare, and now that it was over, all I was left with was regret.

    No matter what, I thought that we would find a way through the darkness. But once he walked out that door, he never looked back.

    In many ways, I still struggle with the regret following the end of my relationship.

    At first, I would enter periods of self-loathing: I could have eaten more so he didn’t have to sleep next to a hollow body made of skin and bones, I could have spent that fourth of July with him instead of choosing to leave him behind for a rock concert, and I could have made him feel like my top priority.

    But the truth is, I was so focused on my distorted self-image that I was blinded to the fact that I was pulling away, physically and emotionally.

    Yet in the last year, I have also come to realize (through ebbs and flows) that the universe has a way of showing you what rock bottom really looks like in order to demonstrate that you are capable of picking yourself up again.

    It is when you are truly alone and forced to face yourself that new opportunities will open up and you force yourself to let love in again.

    In the face of regret, the best thing you can do for yourself is not look back, but to make a promise to yourself that you can learn from the experience and do the right thing going forward.

    My promises to myself include ensuring that I never take anyone for granted again, and act only with love and compassion for myself and for others. The endings we experience in life are the world’s way of showing you that expansion is imminent.

    And if you can’t see through the fog of regret today, know that one day you will. Start making that promise to yourself today that you will no longer sit in your regret, but move forward with integrity, dignity, and self-respect.

    Photo by Conny G.

  • Moving Beyond Pain to Find Happiness and Meaning

    Moving Beyond Pain to Find Happiness and Meaning

    Happy

    “When something bad happens you have three choices. You can let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.” ~ Unknown

    Most of us have experienced a day or event in our life that changes us forever.

    I remember that day vividly, and it still invokes incredible pain in my heart. It was the middle of the night in February. I was twelve years old, and I awoke to my mother screaming and crying to my brother that our dad was dying. He died in his sleep from a massive heart attack.

    I will never forget watching the paramedics carry his lifeless body down the stairs into the ambulance.

    Things happened fast after that: a quick trip to the hospital, watching the priest enter the room where my dad’s body was, and returning home where we congregated in the living room. No one wanted to go upstairs, and no one slept the remainder of the night.

    That was the day that changed the course of my life forever. My happy, carefree existence abruptly ended with my dad’s death. Instead of looking forward to a bright future, I fell into depression that I struggled with for decades.

    I let my dad’s death define me and my life. It was a horrible, tragic event, but life does continue after losing a loved one. That’s the part no one ever told me—that it was okay to go on living and be happy again. Instead, I gave up and felt that life was not worth living.

    Life at home was not the safe, comfortable place it had once been. Now it was full of endless arguments between my mother and brother. I hated being there.

    My once perfect grades were now mediocre, I lost friends, I dropped hobbies, and stopped playing sports. I was no longer interested in life because all I could see and all I could feel were hurt and hopelessness. It wouldn’t go away.

    For the next two decades (yes, decades), I drifted through my life as though I was simply a spectator in it.

    Nothing brought lasting joy or happiness; I always chose the safe, responsible path with the predicable outcome. Paths that would never hurt me, where I would never fail, where my heart would not be broken.

    Where did that get me? Absolutely nowhere. I was as miserable as ever. There were a handful of unfortunate times where I thought suicide was a viable option.

    I briefly sought treatment for depression, but quickly quit when I didn’t see immediate results. Quitting was a common occurrence in my life if I didn’t see results or feel happiness fast enough. As you can imagine, I started and then quit a lot of things in my life, usually quitting when the going got tough.

    I searched for happiness through the usual channels: shopping, eating, drinking, smoking. Nothing worked because I wasn’t looking in the right places. Depression is relentless, but I vowed to move past it and live a happier life.

    I still felt sad, angry, and scared, but I was beginning to feel hope for my future. Or maybe I was just tired of feeling miserable. I definitely was tired of feeling like a victim in my own life.

    I never had a light bulb moment, but I did have perseverance. I consider myself to be a survivor. That’s the only thing that kept me going.

    Life experiences brought new lessons for me. Some were fun, some were not, but they offered an opportunity to learn about myself. It wasn’t always easy to accept when things didn’t go my way, but it provided growth and wisdom that I needed. They always say that life gives you what you need, not what you want.

    Slowly (very slowly), I began to build a life for myself. Fate brought me together with the love of my life, and marriage is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I’m fortunate to have found such a great partner to share my life with. Sharing my life with pets has offered endless amounts of unconditional love.

    More recently, I quit a job that I hated. My past history of journaling developed into a love of writing. I self-published two eBooks and created a blog that serves as an outlet to share ideas that mean the most to me.

    Managing life’s ups and downs is always challenging, but through it all, I have learned more about myself and found better ways to cope. The list below is what I work on daily to bring more happiness and meaning to my life.

    Accept yourself for who you are.

    I am an introvert and at times have been made to feel that something is wrong with me because I am quiet, reserved, and sensitive. It’s taken a long time to accept that there is nothing wrong with my desire for quiet, alone time to think and reflect.

    Do things at your own pace.

    Never feel rushed or that you need to go at someone else’s pace. It took me a long time to process the sadness I was feeling, but I spent too much time continuing to wallow in past hurt.

    Don’t make the same mistake. This is your life; you have to learn, experience, and grow to get the most of this journey. Deal with things in your own way, take your time, but don’t make it an opportunity to live in the past.

    Don’t fear change (and don’t fear the future).

    Life doesn’t stay the same; change is inevitable. Fear of the unknown can paralyze us to never take action, to never live the best life we can have. Know that you have the strength to deal with whatever will happen.

    Pursue passions.

    This is the only way to add value and find meaning in your life. Cultivate creativity, help others, do anything that feeds your soul and is important to you.

    Practice gratitude.

    Remind yourself daily of the good things in your life: be it a spouse, partner, family, friends, pets, gratifying work, a comfortable home, or food in your kitchen. Never take for granted the things that matter most, for they can be gone in a heartbeat.

    For years, I waited for wonderful things to come into my life to restore happiness. It has been a long journey of discovering that only I can control my happiness.

    My life and everything in it is up to me alone. That was a hard lesson to learn. I regretted wasting so many years waiting for good things to happen, when I had the power to make things better all along.

    The answers are not outside of us, but inside, waiting to be discovered.

    Photo by Laura

  • Why Self-Pity is Harmful and How to Let It Go

    Why Self-Pity is Harmful and How to Let It Go

    Letting Go of Self Pity

    “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself.” ~Walter Anderson

    Some of us experience more adversity and painful events in our lives than others. We wonder why our difficulties don’t happen to the “bad” people out there instead of us. Unfortunately, life is not fair.

    Awful things happen. Dreadful circumstances or tragedies will affect most of our lives at some point. It’s okay to cry and feel sorry for yourself and your circumstances, mope around, or get angry. But at some point you must shake it off, let go of the past, and choose to not let it consume you entirely. Otherwise, you won’t be able to learn from the experience and move forward in a constructive way.

    Now, I am not addressing true clinical depression here. I am talking about self-pity, defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a self-indulgent dwelling on your own sorrows or misfortunes.”

    My Own Pity Party

    When I was young, I moved from Florida to Minnesota for a new job. I met a guy there and thought I was in love.

    Then the guy got a new job across the country in Oregon and asked me to move there with him. Thinking I was in love, I got a job transfer as close as possible to his new city (two-and-a-half-hour drive each way) to live with him in his new house. I thought we would get married.

    A few months later, we broke up. (I bet you saw that coming, right?) I had nowhere to live, no friends in that state, and I was stuck all the way across the country from anyone else I knew. I felt alone, abandoned, and unloved. I was also trapped with no money, as I’d put everything I had into his house.

    I was a hapless victim of love, and I played my part like Shakespeare had written it for me. I gave in completely to self-pity. I cried in public for the poor cashier at the grocery store. I wore my swollen eyes like a badge of honor.

    Kind and compassionate coworkers found me a roommate with a twenty-minute commute instead of two and a half hours. They gave me solid proof that I was not alone, not abandoned, and not unloved, yet I refused to be consoled. I allowed self-pity to consume me and held tightly to my belief of being alone and unloved. Poor me, UGH!

    I’m sure there were other people around me who were also in pain, struggling with homelessness, sickness, financial difficulties, bereavement, worries over children. But I didn’t see them or notice them. I didn’t care about them. I only cared about myself and my broken heart. I fed on my own misery.

    When I look back on that time, I see how fortunate I was that I didn’t marry that guy, and I am amazed that I didn’t give more consideration to the kind people who helped me. Self-pity also made me less gracious toward my friends.

    Self-Pity is a Choice

    When we fall into the depression of self-pity, we allow it to take control of our lives. We become completely self-absorbed. It is destructive to dwell on negative events and carry that bitterness and resentment forward. When we keep our focus on the hurt, we aren’t focused on taking control of our lives.

    If we blame negative circumstances for our place in life, we are giving up responsibility and control.

    We whine and feel sorry for ourselves. We can choose to spread our misery, or we can choose to rise above our circumstances.

    Self-pity is a form of selfishness. It makes us less aware of the needs and suffering of others. Our own suffering is all we think or care about in our self-absorbed state.

    The Story of Tony Melendez

    Tony Melendez

    Tony Melendez was born with no arms and a clubfoot. Despite his misfortune, Tony chose to control his own life and happiness. He improved his circumstances as far as he could control them. He made positive choices and took responsibility for his own future.

    As stated in the biography page of his website, Tony is “a man who has spent his life putting personal confidence above his handicap.” How? By learning to play the guitar with his toes!

    He began his career in Los Angeles. Tony is a musician and vocalist with several successful albums. He is also a composer, motivational speaker, and writer.

    In 1987 Tony played for Pope John Paul II in Los Angeles. The Holy Father was so moved that he approached Tony on the stage and commissioned him “to give hope to all the people.”

    Tony took the pope’s words to heart. Tony Melendez Ministries is a non-profit organization that helps people throughout the world, bringing them hope, compassion, scholarships, and other funding.

    Tony Melendez and the Toe Jam Band have a busy tour schedule. There is no room for self-pity in Tony’s busy life because he does not focus on himself. He unselfishly gives to others he feels are less fortunate.

    But don’t expect Tony to play at your pity party. He will give you an example to overcome self-pity and inspire you to achieve a wonderful life.

    You can choose to lift yourself up and enjoy life! You are in charge of your own happiness. It is your personal responsibility.

    So go ahead and cry and mope and feel sorry for yourself and stay in bed all day. Feel the pain and the hurt. Live your reality and misery. It’s okay and even healthy to do that. But then let it go!

    Don’t let it consume your life. You are not alone or unloved. Remember there are other people in your life who need you. There are people you haven’t even met yet who need you! You can’t help anyone else if you only see yourself.

    You cannot change the past, but you can change your future.

    Photo by jeronimo sanz

  • The Blessing of a Broken Heart: How Pain Can Lead to Healing

    The Blessing of a Broken Heart: How Pain Can Lead to Healing

    Broken Heart

    “Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” ~Ruth E. Renkel

    My last breakup was on April 16th, 2012.

    I remember the date because on the evening of April 17th, as I sat with a blotchy red face and tears in my eyes, my dad told me I soon would remember that day and be glad I was no longer sad. “Men are like buses,” he said. “If one leaves you behind, rest assured another will come.”

    I found his support very touching, but it did little to console me. If this guy was a bus, it was the bus I wanted to be on, period. That day, on my dad’s couch for the second night in a row, I slept a total of an hour and cried for about eight.

    I found the breakup pretty surprising and abrupt. After not more than a strange feeling, and a day during which I sensed an uncomfortable distance, I said to my then boyfriend, “I feel that you might not be in love with me,” to which he responded, “Maybe.”

    Boy, did I feel like a fool. What got to me the most was discovering he’d felt that way for a while but hadn’t said anything. There I was, thinking he loved me, and there he was, waiting for me to what, wise up?

    It was harsh to say the least. My feeling was that he didn’t even care enough to bring it up.

    The following weeks were pretty dreary. I sobbed in the shower, sobbed at home, sobbed while I was working, and felt that my worth was at zero. I’d been dropped like a hot potato by someone that knew me; that had me!

    We’ve all been there, left by someone to whom we attributed a big part of our identity, someone who confirmed us as worthy of love and partnership. To different degrees, we all recover, meet someone new, and perhaps go through variations of the same ordeal later on.

    I’d been through breakups before, and painful ones at that. But at some point, in the fog of this loss, I got the feeling that rather than this one being something I had to get over, it was one I had to get, as in understand, beyond the corroboration or mending of my bruised ego.

    I avoided the traditional post-breakup ranting to friends. It didn’t feel right, and there was little room for trash talking since I couldn’t see the inherent wrong in his change of heart or mind. That led me to suspect that the real source of my pain was absolutely inside of me.

    I wanted to go there; I was on a mission. Determined to find the gold, I decided to put myself through a daily routine of questions regarding the source of my pain.

    I first asked myself if it was really that surprising that the relationship had ended. Were things really going so well that it would make zero sense for this person to choose to end things? The answer was, unequivocally, no.

    We had actually been growing apart. We had fundamental differences in opinion, which had an impact on the development of our relationship; we experienced incompatibility in our rhythm of communication; and our expectations of what it meant to be with someone were different.

    On several occasions I actually found myself wanting out, wanting to not feel the potency of loneliness in the company of another; I just kept it to myself. That kind of blew me out of the water: I’d been feeling that way for a while too, and, I too hadn’t addressed it.

    Once that little nugget came to light, I found my assumptions regarding his approach to breaking up were, at best, doubtful. I couldn’t sensibly hold them against him, or myself for that matter. I had to let my resentment toward the manner of the breakup go. I couldn’t be angry with him.

    Lack of presence can create a disconnect between actual experience and fantasy or expectation. It certainly did for me. There’s what I had, and what I demanded it become, and it was my relationship to the latter that I was most attached to.

    Another step in my recovery was accepting that I was most upset about breaking up with my fantasy and my expectation, not with the real, flesh and blood person, and certainly not with the strained relationship.

    Then there was the matter of low self-worth. How could my self-worth be challenged by my worth to someone else? As it turned out, my low self-worth hadn’t actually been engendered by the breakup but rather exposed. It was there all along, supplemented by the relationship.

    The worthiness I had found in the relationship had little to do with self-worth and everything to do with my reliance on someone else’s evaluation of me.

    While I was looking outward for sources of acceptance, affection, validation, and understanding, I could have been looking inward and cultivating the one relationship through which life is experienced, the one with yours truly.

    It was bittersweet to learn of this. It gave the situation meaning and a powerful possibility for growth and wellness. I was still grieving, but I realized that what I was grieving was the tragedy of abandoning myself.

    I decided to go right ahead and feel it all, with the condition that I keep a watchful eye on the narratives that came up. It was important to remain clear about what it was that was really hurting rather than letting the inner storyteller convince me that I had just lost the love of my life.

    Then again, I had indeed lost sight of the love of my life for a while. This was more a case of mistaken identity, because really, what is the love of your life if not your own love?

    I chose the path of natural grieving, and by doing so I became present to myself and acutely aware of how important my well-being is to me.

    If I was grieving my own abandoning so deeply, then I did have deep love, tenderness, affection, and care for myself. I had so desperately needed my own company and acceptance that when the relationship curtain was pulled, the sight of the neglect was unbearable.

    Little by little that presence, awareness, and allowance gave way to trust and safety within on a level I hardly thought possible. I was able to stand by myself, with all that meant, my ups and downs, my strengths and weaknesses.

    I haven’t since looked at romantic relationships in the same way. I haven’t since looked at any kind of relationship in the same way.

    I still remember the night of April 16th as a sad and painful one, but as the distance between me and that night has grown, a fuller picture has come into view that leaves me utterly indebted and grateful to the events that came to pass.

    The night of April 16th was a rude awakening to a reality that demanded and ignited an important part of my healing—one that, in all likelihood, saved my life. I was blessed.

    A Course in Miracles says that we are never upset for the reason we think. Just as words point toward something but aren’t themselves what they mention, the happenings in our lives and our reactions to them point to greater truths, but aren’t themselves the truth.

    If we take it upon ourselves to see what inside of us they are pointing toward, all grievances become opportunities to heal and love ourselves.

    Photo by Sandy Manase

  • Dealing and Healing After Loss: 9 Tips to Help You Get Through the Day

    Dealing and Healing After Loss: 9 Tips to Help You Get Through the Day

    Woman Silhouette

    “Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

    If you don’t know where to start, start anywhere. I keep telling myself that every time I am stuck.

    Well, I’ve been a widow for year and a half, and I am twenty-four years old. Maybe that’s the way to start here.

    My husband had cancer. We tried to enjoy the time before his passing as best we could, so he would die with memories, not dreams. And I guess that the fact that he died content is quite an accomplishment in our relationship.

    But it doesn’t change anything in my sorrow. People keep telling me that I am young, I have my life ahead of me, I should forget, move on, stop mourning, take anti-depressants, and usually they add that I will find somebody else and be happy again.

    This advice makes me sad because I am struggling to live “here and now,” not in the future. I want to live every minute of my life in fulfilling way. And to be honest, I’m kind of scared of the future and I don’t have the possibility to live in the past.

    My whole life changed. There is no way to prepare for loss of the loved one. But I had to be functioning in this world, even when my soul was screaming for help.

    I didn’t let myself break down. I was wearing a mask of a strong, independent woman that deals with everything. I work, study for my master’s degree, have hobbies, and take care of my family. I seem “normal.”

    But deep down, I was broken to pieces. I still am. But that’s okay. I just build myself again like a puzzle. I see those puzzle pieces more clearly now—who my real friends are, what really matters, and what I care about in my life. I have my priorities straight and now I have to build myself up.

    I was searching in books and on the Internet, talking with my friends, other widows, and in therapy, trying to discover what I should do to get through the day more happily. I was looking for help creating peace—just for me, not for the mask I put on for others.

    Here are some tips that help me keep going and be peaceful with myself, beyond the mask.

    1. Write about your feelings.

    I keep writing in my journal about my life. I am introverted and I don’t like sharing my sadness with everyone around me. Occasionally, I let my brother-in-law read it. I write about my husband, how I miss him, and what makes me smile or cry in my day. It’s a way to organize the stuff in my head.

    When you make time to explore your feelings in writing, it’s easier to process them.

    2. Make acceptance your goal.

    Keeping a journal helped me move toward acceptance. I stopped asking, “Why him, why me, why us?” I wrote it down so many times that I lost interest in searching for an answer that I couldn’t figure out. I just accepted it. And the same thing happened with many things I repeatedly wrote down or said out loud; I just sorted them in myself and could focus on other things I had to process.

    You may not feel you can accept what happened right now, but keep it as a goal in your mind and you will slowly move toward acceptance and inner peace.

    3. Find your “flow” activity.

    Music describes how I feel and it makes me comfortable just to listen to the emotions of other people. I keep singing, too. I’m not so good, but for three or five minutes, I am myself.

    I sing the emotions with my mind, heart, and body and it makes me feel alive and whole again. It’s possible to find this state of mind in other activities—sewing, painting, cooking, composing music, or creating anything else.

    Fully immerse yourself in an activity or task that makes you feel whole.

    4. Stay physically active.

    I started jogging/running every day. I prefer night runs, where I clear my head. I never liked running, but my challenge is to put on my running shoes and go outside every day. I don’t mind the weather or if I run 600 m or 15 kilometers—it’s about me, my thoughts, and my body.

    Aside from this, I do martial arts, but yoga has also helped me to stay focused and relaxed within my body and mind.

    Exercise in the way that feels good to you. It helps in your fight against sadness and depression.

    5. Keep your balance and take care of yourself.

    Usually my life deals with extremes. To work it out, it’s about learning time-management and putting everything in balance—time for myself (relaxation, reading), for school/work, time for nourishment (keep eating properly), for exercise and hobbies, time to socialize so I don’t isolate myself (meeting friends and family, volunteer work), and time devoted to my health (doctor’s appointments, for body and mind).

    Balancing your assorted needs can have a huge impact on your life. Balance isn’t always easy, so don’t stress about it. Just keep trying.

    6. Seek uplifting information.

    I don’t watch/read bad news, or at least I try to avoid them. I look for entertainment in my low moments (videos with cats help). I also used to read books about widowhood just to know that I am “normal” in my behavior, in my feelings.

    I needed confirmation because I thought I was going crazy. Now I prefer to look for the positive instead of focusing on the depressing things in my life. I search for humanity and beauty in life and focus on my appreciation for those things.

    Nurturing a sense of gratitude can help you survive some of the sadder days.

    7. Give yourself permission not to be okay.

    I had to figure it out by myself. Nobody else could tell me. I now know that I don’t have to put on a mask, to pretend and be strong. I just have to let myself experience my feelings and accept that I am not okay. I have to let myself cry for days. I know I will always climb up again after I am done. I always find a reason to keep going.

    Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Don’t be hard on yourself for feeling down. Give yourself a break.

    8. Keep your mind, senses, heart, and soul open.

    Every day, every minute of my “here and now” world, I try to keep open to experiences and people. I have learned how to sew on a sewing machine and do sign language. I’ve started conversations with sad strangers just because I want to cheer them up for a while.

    Little everyday tasks like these get me out of my comfort zone. And I try to be grateful for things I haven’t seen before.

    Appreciate the beauty of the ordinary, because you already know that nothing lasts forever.

    9. Let other people be there for you.

    Widowhood and grieving are not contagious, but some people act that way and distance themselves. Mostly, they just don’t know how to respond, to help, to exist nearby.

    Of all the things that have helped me, I am most thankful for people that have supported me with their presence (face-to-face, through e-mail, or on the phone). I am grateful for the ones that took me to dinner/coffee and let me talk about what I miss the most about my husband. Or just gave me a hug.

    I wish for everyone who is going through something like this somebody who understands. Who is there for you, even when you say “I am okay” but tears are falling down. You are doing okay. In your own unique way.

    Photo by mrhayata

  • How to Heal a Broken Heart and Wounded Spirit

    How to Heal a Broken Heart and Wounded Spirit

    “We do not heal the past by dwelling there; we heal the past by living fully in the present.” ~Marianne Williamson

    My life fell apart on a warm August evening a few years ago. It had been a full summer: family visits, plans for a cross-country move, barbecues, and plenty of travel. We were happy, my husband and I.

    Or so I thought.

    On that August night, my husband came home to our cozy New York apartment, sat down, and told me, behind a smother of hands and hunched shoulders, that he’s in love with another woman. Well, not so much in those words—they actually came much later—but to save you a longer story, we’ll keep it at that.

    What was clear was that he would not leave her despite the ten years we’d spent together, despite the love he still felt for me, despite the mistake he knew he was making.

    And so, this man whom I loved with unbridled completeness, ran a sledgehammer through my life.

    As it happens, the reverberations of that blow rippled out, unceremoniously taking down other pillars I had come to rely on for my sense of stability and well-being.

    A week after my husband’s declaration, my spiritual home, the yoga studio I practiced and taught at nearly every day for years, closed with twenty-four-hour notice.

    A week later, I was downsized out of another job. .

    I shuffled through my days. At times I’d get a surge of energy and suit up with determination to do something about my situation. Other times I’d sink into an unmoving bump on the couch.

    After weeks of treading water and binging on my stories of “poor me,” I realized that, despite my best efforts, life just kept coming at me. No matter how much I resisted and whimpered, the sun rose, birds sang, and babies still made me laugh.

    I realized that I had a choice: I could keep shutting it out and wallow in misery, or I could open up and receive it.

    I decided to open, ever so slowly, almost against my will. I started with small things: feeling the comforting weight of blankets piled on top of me as I vegged out on the couch, tasting the bitter sweetness of chocolate chip cookies, seeing the texture and hue of the landscape I stared out into.

    In doing this, I discovered that what was breathing nourishment back into my soul and calling me forward into living again was none other than my senses.

    Without doing anything dramatic, without making lofty resolutions or steeling my willpower, I began to heal. I softened. I even laughed. I relearned joy and ease and the thrill of taking risks.

    Could it be so simple? Could it be so obvious?

    Yes, and yes.

    In opening, despite the pain and miserable facts of my life, a new awareness took hold: our senses are portals to the soul.

    They are our inborn pleasure centers, receiving and transmitting sensory data—pleasure and pain—directly to the soul, where it is translated into information for the soul to use, to learn from, and to grow from.

    Like a salve on a wound, senses can nourish and calm an achy soul and administer cooling bandages to a broken heart.

    The senses tell us, in every single darn moment: Yes, we’re alive (and what a gift!). And, yes, there is pleasure and joy and beauty and so much room to expand into. They tell us, yes, this journey, this life, is worth it.

    All we have to do is open up to what is, even just a tiny bit. The rest will take care of itself.

    Opening, we see the beauty of the leaves in the sunlight.

    Opening, we hear the wind chimes.

    Opening, we feel a friend’s hand on our shoulder.

    We take in the pleasure and the desire of our soul is quelled. We are set at ease. We have space now to rest, and heal.

    So, I made the decision to nurture my senses and give my soul what it desired, even if it meant that my senses brought in pain, or ugly sounds, or smelly feet.

    Because I learned that when my body aches from too many hours at the computer, I can still look to the blue sky and take cool drinks of water.

    Because when I’m wracked with disappointment or the sting of failure, I can still feel warm water on my skin.

    Because when I’m overwhelmed and wrung out from demands and deadlines, I can still breathe in the smell of a hearty stew and hear the kind words of friend.

    For every pain, there is a pleasure. And I suspect that we are capable of pleasures far beyond the reaches of any pain.

    It all starts with one simple move: opening to what is. Opening our sense portals to the deluge of pleasure that surrounds us, and filling our souls with the fullness of ease and nourishment beyond our imagination. This is the space we bathe in that heals wounded souls and broken hearts.

  • 6 Things to Do When You Feel Small and Insignificant

    6 Things to Do When You Feel Small and Insignificant

    Big Sky

    “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” ~Robert Schuller

    On nights when the stars shine bright in the Arizona desert, I remember to tell myself to pay attention to the universe’s handiwork. From space, the Earth is a mere speck in the galaxy. I am humbled by this knowing, by my smallness. I call it my Ratatouille moment.

    Ratatouille is an animated movie that tells a story of a dreamer, a remarkable rat named Remy, who aspires to be a chef. Emerging from the sewers one day, Remy was shown a different vantage point of the city.

    To his great surprise, Remy discovers that he’s been living in one of the most celebrated cuisine capital of the world, Paris.

    Like Remy, I was lifted from my version of the gutters, a refugee camp, and exposed to a world of richer possibilities. 

    Americans know something of the Vietnam War, only if by name, as a thing that happened in a distant past, in a distant continent. The ones who fought in it knew firsthand the cost of going and the cost of returning home. They returned to a country that failed to appreciate their sacrifices; they defended an idealism no one understood. But they survived.

    There was another group of survivor. What you may not know is that there was a third country involved. Laos. The US dropped more than two million tons of bombs on Vietnam’s neighboring country in an effort to thwart its enemy from moving food and weapons to strategic locations.

    After the war was declared over, many Lao citizens were left homeless and took refuge in the neighboring country of Thailand. My family was among them. 

    And much like Remy’s world, inside a refugee camp, the only thought that existed on anyone’s mind was, how am I going to survive today?

    Refugees are forced to live in the moment because they can’t fathom a future beyond tomorrow.

    Food, when available, came in the form of a packet of dry protein handed out by missionaries. Most times, you are left scampering for meals that others throw away, buying meat that was left sitting too long in the sun, and making do with what kindhearted merchants were willing to give away.

    But like Remy, I saw my life taking shape beyond my family’s makeshift, one-room thatched hut. Something planted itself in my heart.

    I knew I didn’t belong here, and that where I belong was a world beyond the barbed wire fences that kept my family in.

    The hope that was in me was due in part to my courageous mother. She taught herself English by using a tattered Thai-English dictionary. Then she taught me, her little daughter, all that she learned.

    When others accepted that this was their lot, my mother had the audacity to see beyond her circumstances.

    I’m grateful for this remembrance and for my Ratatouille moments.

    We need a dose of humility from time to time. And if our humility serves to bring appreciation and a broader perspective of our place in the universe, feeling small once in a while is healthy.

    But then there are times when I feel small in an unhealthy way. It’s that crashing wave of emotion that comes at you like a tsunami, leaving you with a dignity crushing, self-reducing kind of insignificance.

    While it’s happening, I feel completely blindsided by it. But after it passes, I can usually spot some triggers. All of them points to change.

    Though I make light of them, see if you recognize any of these scenarios.

    Career Change

    Your boss did not appreciate your contribution. You salvaged the last shred of dignity and quit. You took the leap of faith, followed your passion, and birthed that passion project. The world ignores your talent.

    Value and Lifestyle Change

    Discovering your true value in life, you rid yourself of the fancy cars and the fancy home. Your spouse, however, does not share your fervor for the minimalist lifestyle and served you divorce papers.

    Lost of Support System

    Furthermore, since you no longer pick up the tab, your old pals stopped calling. Your hygiene suffers. Then you become too depressed to leave the house and make new friends. Without family, friends, and your material possessions, like a TV to fill up your time, you are left to contemplate life.

    You feel lost.

    But you are not.

    The only thing you lost is the hand-me-down values. The most important person in the world found you. You.

    Don’t feel it in this moment? It’s okay. Sit with it. Change feels like death because your old self is dying. But with every winter, there follows a spring. Allow yourself to have the bad feeling.

    But don’t let yourself linger there too long.

    Recognize this set of numbers? 000. It’s a reset position. You are starting at zero. An unhealthy mind will see this as a place of failure. An undefeatable spirit will see this as a blank canvas with wondrous possibilities.

    Believe me when I say your mind will go into complete panic, paranoia, or pity party mode. If it shifts into any of these modes, you will sink into the quick sand of despair. Cut it off. Here are six things that can help.

    6 Things That May Help When You Feel Small

    1. Get out of the house.

    Just the fact that you are out in the sun and breathing fresh air will lift your spirits.

    2. Stand tall.

    Just changing your posture changes your mood. Throw that shoulder back, chin up, smile. Smiling will trick your mind into thinking it’s happy even when you are not.

    3. Have a car karaoke.

    Simon Cowell’s not there to judge, so belt out your favorite tunes. For me, when Joan Jett is singing, “I Love Rock ‘n Roll,” my inner rocker chick cannot be denied. Drum on that dashboard. Strum the air guitar. But don’t take your eyes off the road.

    4. Volunteer in your community.

    It will give you a sense of purpose. You are needed. You have something to offer: your time. That’s rich.

    5. Donate something to Goodwill.

    You will feel rich instantly. You have things of value that you can afford to give away.

    6. Pay a checkout clerk or any service person you come in contact with a lavish praise.

    See how you have the power to make their day? You just made them feel big.

    What helps you when you feel small?

    Photo by Ryan Hyde

  • Stop Resisting: Surrender to Your Body to Transform It and Your Life

    Stop Resisting: Surrender to Your Body to Transform It and Your Life

    Surrender

    “Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Most people don’t realize that your relationship with your body affects your entire life. Why? Because if you are fighting with your body, you are fighting with yourself. And if you are fighting with yourself, you are resisting what you truly desire in life.

    I know too well what it feels like to fight with your body. I had the same fear as most people…

    If I love my body as it is today, it will get worse. I will gain more weight. If I keep my constant attention on it, remind myself hourly how much I don’t like it, it will transform.

    Sure sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Has anyone ever “hated themselves skinny” and had healthy, long lasting results? Or how about the opposite? Has anyone ever “loved themselves fat”? And I am not talking about the love you think you are giving yourself by eating a package of Oreo cookies. I am talking true, authentic love causing the body to gain massive amounts of weight.

    And yet this is our fear: that if we were to love ourselves, love our bodies as they are in this moment, we would get worse. But remember, what you fight you strengthen.

    The more I fought with my body for gaining weight, the more weight I gained.

    Then, one sunny day as I was driving, singing along to my favorite tunes, thinking about what new clothes I wanted to purchase at the mall, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.

    Before I could comprehend what this thing was, everything went black. To this day, I can’t be fully sure whether everything went black because my eyes were closed or because my airbag deployed, but either way I knew that I was no longer on my path to the mall.

    In what felt like the most extreme game of bumper cars, I finally came to a stop as my Chevy truck flipped on to the side with me on the freeway and my passenger door above me.

    Turns out I was hit by five cars, one car for each lane on the freeway. And although I was able to safely exit my vehicle the next morning, I quickly learned that I was not able to lift my own head and, therefore, couldn’t move freely on my own.

    As I lay on the couch each day, unable to lift my own head, I no longer had the strength to fight against my body and, therefore, my body finally had the ability to let go. And after thirty days of only moving with help to get to and from the bathroom, my body released ten pounds.

    It is safe to say that some people would have gained weight injured on the couch. There are very specific reasons that my body didn’t, one of which was my ability to simply be okay with where I was.

    I wasn’t angry that I couldn’t move. I wasn’t upset that I could no longer work out. I certainly wasn’t fighting with the idea of a much-needed vacation from working. And I decided to treat it as just that—a vacation from my everyday life. The life that I had set up for myself that was so stressful and impossible to maintain.

    I relaxed and enjoyed not needing to do anything but heal.

    I realized that there are more important things in life then losing weight, like being able to lift my head again.

    I allowed my body to rest and stopped punishing it for being the way it was.

    And I finally allowed my body and myself a much-needed break from the stress of trying to lose weight.

    I highly recommend surrendering to your body without being hit by five cars. Here are three tips to get you started:

    1. Become present where you are.

    The first step is to be honest with yourself and admit where you are to establish a starting point for your growth. Otherwise, this would be like trying to drive to New York without knowing if you are in California, Florida, or Mississippi.

    It also follows along with the theme that what you fight, you strengthen. The longer you ignore where you are or pretend you are not where you are, the longer you’ll stay there.

    When you let yourself be in your body without needing to have a different one, you release the resistance and have the ability to move forward toward a life you truly desire.

    When you are desperately clinging to a different body with all your might, convinced that this is what will bring you all the happiness, contentment, and love in the world, you will find that an alternate physical appearance simply doesn’t create the internal feelings you are after.

    Therefore, even if you achieve this physical body that you desire, it will come with a sense of emptiness, as you still must learn how to simply be where you are with full presence and love, no matter what.

    2. Feel your feelings.

    In order for me to find acceptance for myself, I had to feel. I had gone so many months feeling completely numb to everything and then wondering, “Why can’t I just love myself?”

    In order for me to love myself, I had to first admit that I wasn’t happy. In fact, I was out right pissed off. And after a celebratory pity party, followed by many tears, I could finally move forward.

    When we ignore what we feel, we think we can make it go away. However, just the opposite is true. Not feeling our feelings isn’t a way to make sure we never have sadness; it’s a way to start an inner battle for however long it takes you to finally feel sad.

    The minute you admit that you are in fact pissed off, frustrated, and down right suspicious of your body, you will release the resistance, call off the fight, and move toward an overall feeling of lightness.

    3. Find peace and calm.

    It’s no secret that a stressful environment is not conducive for lasting results in your life, yet so many people live each day in a stressed out body, wondering why they can’t release their weight and feel lighter.

    Then to make matters worse, they obsess over their food and spend hours at the gym without even taking a moment to breathe.

    In order to find acceptance for your body and release your weight, you first want to create the most peaceful environment in your body as you possibly can.

    This doesn’t mean you have to lock yourself in a room with your Pure Zen CD for a month; it means you begin to find places in your life where you can introduce more peace and calm easily—for example, your own thoughts and beliefs. Why not zen those puppies out?

    Instead of believing that weight loss is hard and your appetite is too big, why not believe that in the past weight loss has been challenging and now you are open and ready to receive an approach that feels easy and effortless? And your appetite isn’t too big, but maybe you need to learn how to better connect to your body and hear your hunger and fullness cues.

    We tend to take on very stressful thoughts and beliefs about weight that will inhibit our bodies’ ability to release the weight easily and effortlessly. If you believe weight loss is hard, painful, and full of restriction, then it will be. If you believe that weight loss is intuitive, insightful, and transformative, then it will be.

    You get to choose what your weight loss journey looks like. I suggest you choose a path that feels calm and peaceful in order to enjoy each step of the way without being so dependent on the end result to fill you up.

    When you become present with exactly where you are, feel all your feelings, and find your peace and calm, you now have the ability to stop fighting. The battle that you have been facing with your body and weight will finally be done as you wave your white flag and admit that you are tired of the fight.

    This doesn’t mean you aren’t giving up on your true desires. You are deeply aligning with them.

    You are admitting that this whole weight loss thing isn’t something that you want to control anymore. That maybe there is a better way to release your weight that doesn’t suck. And you’re reminding yourself that when you desire something, the ability to have it has to be present.

    Therefore, you have no reason to focus so intently on losing weight anymore. Instead, you get to focus on living your best life in this moment, wherever you are.

    Remember this, you’re not weak or pathetic for surrendering. You are smart and powerful.

    You have the ability to say that you have so much love for yourself that you are willing to do whatever it takes to feel good now, regardless of where you are. And this is the most powerful move you can make for lasting results in your body and your life.

    Photo by Scott

  • Finally Letting Go of the Pain and Moving On after a Breakup

    Finally Letting Go of the Pain and Moving On after a Breakup

    “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C. S. Lewis

    Another year over and you’re still troubled by a relationship that ended last year or in years past. The whole thing is dragging on too long—why can’t you just get over it? But every time you think about it or bump into your ex, you feel ruined again

    How about giving your feelings another shake?

    Rattle them in any direction—a new one. If it turns out to be the wrong direction you can correct that later, but just move them, any which way, get them out of the rut they’re in. One way to do this is by talking it through, even more than you already have.

    Why Talk it Out?

    Perhaps something remains unsaid for you, even now. Perhaps that’s why your feelings remain so strong. Or perhaps they’re entangled with non-relationship issues—a sense of getting older, time passing, concern about not having children, or the life you hoped for.

    Perhaps part of you holds out hope you could get back together again. Perhaps you need to admit that and let go of it.

    Maybe you fear you won’t meet anyone else like your ex. You won’t, but you will meet someone. Just they will be different.

    Explore all this.

    How It Helped Me

    I attended a few counseling sessions a year after the end of a relationship. It had been a long, happy relationship that had started in my early twenties, but it burned out as our lives took us in different mental and geographic directions.

    For the year after the breakup I got on okay with life, but the shine had gone. A veil hung between me and true engagement with the world. I could smile but the smile never went to my eyes.

    I honestly thought I had done all the talking I could at the time of the breakup—my ex and I had even attended couple-counseling together—but a year later, something still felt stuck in my chest.

    So I sat myself down in front of a counselor. I didn’t want to or feel like it, but suddenly all this stuff came out of my mouth—stuff I found laughable or which fell away as I said it, stuff I didn’t know I’d been thinking. Apparently, it just wanted to get itself off my chest. And it had needed a year to mature sufficiently to do it.

    I kept apologizing to the counselor for talking endlessly and not letting her get a word in. But it worked. I realized I was over the relationship, but not the process of its ending—the fatigue, the accusations, the indecisions, the reverberation among friends and family.

    I was suffering a lingering childlike shock that such things could happen in life. Discovering this, and finally putting words to it, allowed those feelings to go.

    Some other things I’ve learned along the way:

    If You’re Feeling Overwhelmed By Emotion

    You’ve just bumped into your ex and you’re feeling highly emotional. Half of you wants to cry, half of you would do anything to get rid of those feelings.

    This is your mind panicking to get rid of emotions it cannot understand. The mind likes to understand things but can never understand the heart. Hearts have no logic.

    So, abandon trying to comprehend what happened or why. After all, at this stage, is there anything your ex could say or do that would change how you feel?

    Befriend the part of you that gets emotional. Don’t beat it up. It’s normal and healthy to feel how you feel. You’re alive!

    Besides, emotion shows you have a heart and would not wish the same sorrow on others. This aspect of your personality is to be treasured. Wouldn’t you love it in anyone else?

    So, instead of trying to quash emotion, ask “Is it possible for me to feel like this and still be okay?” Because your heart is stronger than you know; it is designed to handle being broken.

    Loving Someone Does Not Mean You Should Be With Them

    It also doesn’t mean that they’re good for you. Face this reality squarely. You can have a happy life, even with great sorrow in your heart, even while carrying loss.

    Physically, your body is probably keeping going just fine and it’s only your mind that has the problem. Its idea that “things should have been different” conflicts with what actually happened, so it wedges your mental wounds open.

    That causes the turmoil. Give in.

    Admit: “This is exactly how it should have been. This is exactly how it is.” Shrug while saying it. Facing the truth is difficult. As a result, life may feel more painful, yet perhaps also more peaceful, because conflict with it is reduced.

    Our Sorrowful Life And Happy Life Can Exist In Parallel

    Author A.S.Byatt has occasionally spoken about the longevity of bereavement. She lost her son forty years ago. He was eleven.

    Twenty years later she told an interviewer, “You don’t get over it and you suffer greatly from people supposing you will. You suffer from people not understanding the pain of grief.”

    Another twenty years on, Byatt shared with another interviewer a metaphor she developed with her friend Gill Cadell, a widow. It involves parallel train tracks:

    “One is appalling and one you just go along,” explained Byatt. “Gill said to me, ‘Is it alright to be pleased to see the flowers in the morning?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes, because the other track is always there.’”

    The interviewer asked, “You mean the appalling track?”

    “Yep.”

    “And it’s still there?”

    “Oh yes, it hasn’t changed.”’

    You see, winter trickles into the beginnings of spring. It’s okay to try loving a new person while still loving your ex. The heart can simultaneously run along multiple tracks.

    Making The Decision

    My friend, who dabbles in NLP, had a client who was still heartbroken eighteen months after breaking up with her boyfriend. The woman was explaining to my friend, in detail, how she felt—a curdle of sadness, anger, hurt—and how she was convinced she would never be able to move on.

    My friend stopped her, saying, “And now tell me, how you will feel when you are over him?”

    The woman described how free she would feel, how relieved that it was behind her, how keen she would be to get on with life, how confident and unafraid she would be if she happened to meet her ex.

    My friend suggested, “So why don’t you just feel that now?”

    The woman’s life transformed instantly.

    For her, it was about making a decision to move on. If it has been a while since your relationship ended, perhaps this choice is also available to you. Play with the idea.

    Five More Minutes And We’re Going On A Bike Ride

    I remember a story about Kylie Minogue that went something like this. She had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and her boyfriend sometimes found her crying on the bathroom floor.

    He would firmly tell her, “Okay, honey, you can cry for just five minutes, then I’m taking you on the bike for a ride.”

    She’d think, “Hmm. Actually a bike ride sounds pretty good.”

    This is the attitude to take. It doesn’t matter if sorrow comes again and again, just each time draw a line in the sand. And beyond that line make something else happen.

    It Has Been Long Enough Now

    People may tell you it’s time you got over your relationship. Like with bereavement, you don’t ever have to “get over” it, but you may need to more forcibly move yourself on, and if you’re stuck, to take a new approach to doing so.

    Hurtful experiences, ones that emotionally and logistically reset our lives, leave us with two choices: open up more or close down.

    The braver choice—the one that will allow new things to enter your life—is to open up.

    So how about setting aside a few weeks to unfold this a little more? If you can’t climb out, dig out. Book yourself a few sessions with a counselor whether or not you feel like it or think it will help.

    Go in, sit down, see what happens. Give your heart the chance to say everything it wants regarding the relationship and whatever is entwined with it. What emerges may surprise you.

    Give yourself a new and different opportunity to leave it behind.

  • Dealing with Loss: 3 Uplifting Truths About Death and Grief

    Dealing with Loss: 3 Uplifting Truths About Death and Grief

    Enlightenment

    “Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever; you just have to live.” ~Natalie Babbitt

    I stared at my reflection in the mirror as my face contorted into a painful grimace, tears streaming down my cheeks. My throat constricted to keep the sobbing at bay. My grandmother was dying, and this is how I coped with death: by falling apart.

    I was lucky; this is the way death is “supposed” to go. Grammy was 96 and had lived out her old age in comfort.

    While I knew I would miss her kisses and the way she generously dished out advice, it would be selfish to insist on keeping her here, as if that were an option. Grammy said that she was ready and that this plane held little thrill for her anymore. The inevitable end was here, and yet I was still a giant mess.

    I’d recently been through a wonderful and dizzying period of self-discovery and growth. I’d dug my self-confidence up from the basement and lifted her to the heavens. I had gotten a handle on all my self-sabotaging behaviors, like drinking wine to escape. I even wrote a popular course to help others break bad habits, gain a sense of purpose, and start living big.

    I finally felt like my real life had begun, like I knew who I was, and my need for validation from others had finally dropped away.

    Yet my present breakdown was glaring evidence that we’re never done growing. We’re always evolving to higher and higher ground. We will never “arrive” and there is no final destination in this life, except for death.

    In the coming days as I wrestled with my grief, I was presented with the following three uplifting truths about death.

    1. Death is the ultimate deadline.

    I’m a True Blood fan, but from watching the show and seeing how vampires handle the understanding that they’ve been granted everlasting mortality, it occurs to me that none of them really accomplish all that much.

    Take the case of Eric Northman, who was a Viking when he was turned into a vampire. He’s been roaming the planet for 1,000 years, give or take a few hundred. You’d think that with all that time to dream, plan, and accomplish he could be a motivational speaker, prolific author or artist, or a talk show host with success that rivals Oprah’s. So what is he? He’s a bar owner.

    Death provides humans with the ultimate deadline. Behaviors that hasten this deadline, health-destroying habits like sloth and overeating, are a means of living suicide, of acting dead, and distracting us from fully living.

    When we’re presented with evidence of our own mortality, so many of us wake up and decide that we’re going to cast aside these old habits, figure out what would make us feel happy and fulfilled, and then go do that.

    2. We can’t enjoy life in the absence of darkness.

    Imagine the most glorious spring day of your life. You’re walking around outside, enjoying the perfect temperature that supports your physical comfort. The sunshine makes you feel perky and happy, the trees are blooming, and you feel hopeful and alive.

    Now what if the only weather you’d ever known was like this spring day? Most of us would immediately say, “Yes, that would be great! That’s the only weather I’d ever need to know.”

    There are people who live in climates like this year round and they appreciate it, but the reason they can appreciate it is because they know there are places like London where it rains a lot, or places that are cold and windy and dark for much of the year.

    If all we were ever shown was perfection and we never witnessed a contrast to that perfection, we wouldn’t have a frame of reference for knowing how perfect it is.

    We can’t enjoy life in the absence of darkness. We need a contrast—of sickness to truly enjoy and appreciate our health, and to endure rainy days to fully appreciate the sunshine. We need to know that death exists in order to truly appreciate life and to fully live it.

    3. Grief is fleeting.

    As I stood in front of that mirror, my throat feeling closed off as I tried to keep back the sobs, it occurred to me to physically open up into my grief, to relax into it and to receive it into my body rather than continuing to resist it.

    I knew that physically resisting my grief was painful in my chest and throat. I became curious to know what it would feel like if I allowed the grief to come to me.

    I leaned into it. When I stopped resisting it and I breathed my grief into my lungs and tried to let it fill me, a most curious thing happened: my grief escaped me.

    When you let it in, grief comes and goes. When you resist grief, and when you close your body physically to the experience, then grief hovers around you in an attempt to gain entry. When you invite grief in, it will come and set a spell, and then it wanders off while other emotions visit with you.

    When you lose a loved one, grief will come back to visit with you, again and again. But if each time grief comes knocking you allow it come in, over time, grief will come back less and less frequently and for shorter and shorter periods of time.

    Eventually, when you think of your loved one, rather than thinking of loss, you’ll honor their memory with a smile.

    Photo by Hartwig HKD

  • 7 Ways to Cope With the Grief of Heartbreak

    7 Ways to Cope With the Grief of Heartbreak

    “Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C.S. Lewis

    Shock. That was the first feeling. Shock and disbelief.

    This isn’t really happening. Denial.

    Look into her eyes. Slow realization. I’m not dreaming. Fear.

    Wave upon wave of torrential sadness. Messy.

    We’d been in a long-distance relationship, and as far as I was aware, everything was inutterably perfect. I was as happy as I’d ever been; I was in love.

    For months, I’d been planning to travel across the country to see her. We talked about it endlessly, fantasized about its possibilities, gazed longingly upon the shimmering sapphire-memories we were sure to make.

    It was as if we were already nostalgic for what we imagined would occur, for what we were certain would be one of the best times of our lives.

    I waited and waited, and finally, the day came. Brimming with excitement and anticipation, I boarded a plane and flew over 1,200 miles.

    Everything seemed to go wonderfully until the third day of my visit. I remember it clearly, how she looked at me with those caring eyes—irises the color of melted caramel—and told me something wasn’t right. She couldn’t explain it, but she didn’t feel the same way anymore.

    Blindsided. I could hardly fathom the truth—that our gleaming vision had been fool’s gold, our immaculate castle a house of cards.

    Perhaps I overlooked something obvious, some subtle-yet-pronounced signal. I don’t know. To this day, I’m still not entirely sure why she ended it.

    What I do know, though, is how it felt. I had invested so much of myself into ideas of a future with her that it was like a piece of my identity had been amputated. The sunlit future I’d treasured had been blacked out before my eyes in a proverbial nuclear holocaust.

    I felt purposeless, stamped out, alone.

    Thinking back now, it strikes me that all people probably experience heartbreak in relatively the same way. Maybe some feel more anger, while others feel more depression, but in general, a sudden loss is like a tsunami of confusion, regret, and sorrow.

    It’s something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, but if you live long enough, it’s unavoidable. Chalk it up to this peculiar circus we call the human experience—sometimes gravy, sometimes gauntlet.

    I firmly believe that pain is necessary for growth, but that knowledge doesn’t always make it any less crummy when you’re neck-deep in swamp muck. You mostly just press on, search for hope, and let Father Time do as that old adage says: heal the wounds.

    And amazingly, after a while, things do improve. Eventually, you’ll be surprised to notice that you went all day without thinking about it, that you’re enjoying yourself again, that you’re no longer wallowing, that you let go. 

    But in the early stages of the healing process, day-to-day life feels about like staggering seven miles through three feet of elephant ordure.

    If you’re in that place right now, I’m writing this post for you. You’re stronger than you know. Keep going. Things will be better.

    7 Ways to Cope With the Grief of Heartbreak

    In my experience, there isn’t any magical antidote for that immediate, pressing sensation of grief, but these simple steps will make it all a bit easier to swallow.

    1. Know you’re not alone.

    When my girlfriend dumped me, I turned to the Internet to read about breakups. What I found were countless stories of people who had suffered precisely what I had. Reading those stories was therapeutic because I no longer felt so helpless or worthless.

    I felt connected to the billions of other people who’d felt equally awful. I gained respect for my ancestors and my contemporaries, for the strength of the human race. I started to have faith that I too could find the resilience to survive and reconstruct my world.

    2. Take it one day at a time.

    Or, heck, one breath at a time. One moment at a time. When I was down and defeated, I couldn’t imagine how in the world I was going to survive, let alone do all the work that I knew was coming.

    Thinking about the future was entirely overwhelming. I couldn’t do it. Instead, I just concentrated on single days.

    The present was painful, but I stayed there. I stayed with the pain as it ebbed and flowed through the days. And the days crept by, each one a small victory.

    3. Reach out.

    Internet stories can be wonderful, but it’s your loved ones who will be a godsend in times of grief. Don’t hesitate to contact your friends and family immediately when something tragic has occurred. This is why we’re here—for supporting one another, or as Ram Dass says, “walking each other home.”

    I remember calling my mom, dad, and several of my friends shortly after my breakup. They couldn’t make the pain go away, but they listened and said what they could.

    I knew I was cared for. I knew they were concerned. Feeling that love reminded me that I wasn’t worthless. I was still the same me.

    4. Create.

    After she told me the bad news, I felt an eruption of emotion that was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. There was just so much of it. I needed to let it out somehow, so I wrote.

    Writing was a rock, something that had been there before and was still there, something I could turn to. I wrote poetry and letters and stories. Translating the experience into art was a type of catharsis.

    It was a way to channel the energies, to release them, to cleanse myself. Whether it’s painting, singing, dancing, drawing, or sculpting, perhaps you will find solace in an art form as well.

    5. Find comfort in music.

    After the split, I remember sitting in an airport, listening to “Hailie’s Song” by Eminem, crying quietly to myself as oblivious people walked by. Sure, that’s a sad image, but it also felt good to let it out. It was part of my healing process.

    Music was another constant, something that wouldn’t let me down. I think I probably listened to every sad song I’d ever heard. It wasn’t a way to feel sorry for myself (okay, maybe a little) as much as another means of knowing I wasn’t alone.

    It was a way of feeling more poignantly the pain in the songs and lyrics of others, a way of empathizing with them and knowing they understood how I felt too.

    6. Maintain your normal routine.

    This was perhaps the hardest thing to do after what happened—return to my routine. Honestly, I felt like locking myself in a dark room with ten pounds of ice cream and sucking my thumb for the next few months. It didn’t seem possible to return to my day-to-day life.

    But I did, and after a while, I realized that it was my routine that was renewing my sense of purpose. Actually doingthings took my mind off of the hole in my chest and reminded me of my value.

    7. Believe.

    It takes a certain measure of faith to fall into a black hole of pain, grope around aimlessly for a while, and eventually emerge. My situation felt devoid of anything positive. It seemed like there was nothing to hang my hat on.

    But somewhere, deep within me, I managed to find the courage to believe that things would be better again. I believed that life would not forsake me.

    I believed I could weather the storm, and after a few months, the horizon didn’t look so bleak anymore. I began to leave the past where it was meant to be—behind me—and to find satisfaction in the present.

    Reflecting on Now and Then

    I think about her some days. I read the letters she wrote to me; sometimes a song reminds me of her, and sometimes, for no good reason at all, that face I knew so well inexplicably materializes in my mind’s eye.

    I still feel the slightest pangs of sadness, a sort of vague wistfulness for a future that never was with a person who was so dear to me. I imagine her out there somewhere, living out her sunrise-to-sunsets, and I wonder if she remembers me too.

    But then I smile, because I’m okay. I experienced the bliss of unconditional love, and it brings me joy to remember it. I’d never take it back, not for anything.

    I’m at peace now, with her and with what happened, with myself and with this moment.

    I hope she is too. I hope she’s happy and without fear, smiling that beautiful smile.