Tiny Buddha

Tag: resilience

  • How We Can Overcome Our Obstacles When We Don’t Believe It’s Possible

    How We Can Overcome Our Obstacles When We Don’t Believe It’s Possible

    “If we can see past perceived limitations, then the possibilities are endless.” ~Amy Purdy

    Nature inspires me. There are hidden messages consistently on display. On my daily walks, I find myself interpreting these messages in relation to my life.

    One day, near the end of my walk, I was paying attention to the trees. A giant one caught my eye. Its magnificence was portrayed as morning sunlight peeked through the branches and bright green leaves.

    I noticed the enormity of its trunk, and then I saw the crooked fence.

    The giant tree trunk had grown so big that it pushed a section of the fence up off the ground. The fence barely had any balance left and looked as if it could topple over at any moment.

    As I watched all of this, I remembered another tree I had seen on one of my walks. The tree’s branches had grown so long and so thick, they struck through the slats on a metal fence. Big brown wooden knobs stuck out, encapsulating the thin wires. I was in such awe, I reached out and touched the chunky parts of the tree, thinking I could unwrap it from the fence. Not a chance. The fence had become a part of the tree.

    In seeing this tree, I thought, “Trees just do what they do. They continue to grow despite any objects that happen to be next to them.”

    These objects could appear as obstacles, but that does not stop the tree from growing. The tree adapts to its surroundings and keeps on keeping on. Depending on the barrier, the tree either continues to grow around it, or the tree ends up wiping out whatever is in its way.

    How is this symbolic in the life of a human?

    The nature of our true essence is to grow. Life seems to contain many events that are beyond our control. We find ourselves in situations where it seems we are being tested. Obstacles show up on our path, and we are faced with the question, “What do I do now?”

    But it really isn’t the obstacle that is in our way. It’s our beliefs about the obstacle that can stop us in our tracks. The tree doesn’t come up against the fence and stop growing. It just keeps doing what it’s supposed to do.

    Here is how this relates to an experience I went through in my early twenties. It was a true test of following my inner guidance instead of listening to the doubts of others around me, as well as my own uncertainties.

    At the age of twenty-two, I found myself pregnant, single, and living back at home with my mother. I was working an office job forty hours a week, making ten dollars an hour. Luckily, I had good health insurance, but what I didn’t have was a lot of self-confidence. I carried around shame.

    This was in the year 2001. Times had changed, right? Why was I so ashamed of being a young, pregnant, unwed girl?

    Because even in current times, that stigma was carried around deep in the trenches of society. And my own mother and older sisters had been through it, too. You could say the feeling of shame was passed down in many generations.

    After my son was born, I knew I had to do something different with my life. I received government help for food and baby formula, and my son was on government health insurance. Again, this only added to my shame because of the looks I would get at the checkout counter in the stores.

    But I knew I wanted to provide a better life for my son, and I knew there was something inside of me that wanted to grow beyond what I thought my potential was.

    I felt an inner calling to go into the medical field. So I decided to go back to college. Many obstacles showed up on my path once I decided to go for it.

    I hadn’t even enrolled in college yet, but when I began speaking aloud about my plan, fear set in, and people’s opinions fueled that fear.

    How would I attend college full-time with a four-month-old baby, work to provide for us, and find childcare in the meantime? Could I do it?

    Some people didn’t think so. They told me it would be too hard. They told me my son was too little, that I should wait until he was older.

    Attending college and raising my son would be too stressful. How did I plan to pay for tuition? Could I even get accepted into the highly competitive program, especially since I was already on academic probation?

    Right out of high school, I proved to lack ambition, and along with poor grades, I ended up dropping out of college after just two years of study. Now, how in the world was I going to get the university to accept me back, especially as a newly single parent?

    The obstacles kept appearing, left and right. A university advisor even told me that the program I wanted into was extremely challenging. He asked me, “Do you have family who can help you with your son? Because this program is rigorous and requires a lot of time.”

    Imagine, all of these stumbling blocks could have made me believe that I was not capable of pulling it off. I could have chosen to believe what I was hearing.

    I could have formed beliefs telling me my plan wouldn’t work. I had the choice to follow my inner guidance, my true essence, which pushed me ahead to grow, or I could believe my thoughts about it all being too hard. I could buy into the shame and the collective idea that I had no future.

    But there was something deep inside of me that knew I was meant to do this. I was meant to challenge all of the belief systems put in place that could hold me back.

    Back then, I did not know the power of positive thinking. I had never heard of manifestation. There were no tools in my toolbox to help push through any doubts. All I had was my inner guidance system and the strong desire to grow and show myself that I could do something really challenging.

    Four years later, after a lot of hard work, I graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in respiratory therapy and was already employed at a local trauma hospital. I was living out on my own with my son and supporting us with my single income. I had found my passion for life, too. I was helping people who were sick.

    Our lives are a reflection of what we believe is true and possible. The belief systems we have in place guide our thoughts, desires, and the actions we take or do not take to make things happen.

    Instead of letting your beliefs hold you back, use this process to grow around them.

    How To See Through Your Belief System

    1. Choose a specific goal you would like to meet or choose a current situation you would like to change.

    2. Write down every belief you have about that goal or situation, specifically, any beliefs you sense are holding you back.

    These beliefs include:

    “I don’t have enough time.”

    “I’m not smart enough.”

    “I’m too old.”

    “I don’t have enough experience yet.”

    “My family would never approve.”

    3. Take some quiet time to engage with these beliefs. Sometimes I find it helpful to think about these during walks, while driving, or while I’m out in nature.

    4. Question where these beliefs came from. Usually, you will see the restrictive beliefs come from somewhere outside of you. They are ingrained from childhood, simply adopted from your parents and caregivers. You will even see a lot of beliefs come from society on a collective level.

    5. Once you can see where the beliefs come from, you have a choice whether to keep believing in them. What worked for me was not to try to change my beliefs into the opposite but to keep identifying that the belief was outside myself. The belief was not a part of my inner guidance. And then I would choose to move past it, not allowing it to hold me back.

    Forward Movement

    Seeing through your belief system is not an overnight process. More than likely, the systems have been with you for a long time. It can take discipline and effort to recognize them when they arise.

    Recognition of your inner guidance during this process is vital. It will not fail you.

    Keep listening to your inner guidance, your true essence. It will take you beyond your wildest dreams. It will be the tree that grows through fences.

  • If You’ve Been Abused and You’ve Lost Your Joy and Sense of Self

    If You’ve Been Abused and You’ve Lost Your Joy and Sense of Self

    “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can choose not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou

    I know what you’re feeling because I’ve been there. You’re sitting quietly with your pain asking yourself if the abuse really happened or if you just fabricated it in your mind like they said you did.

    You’re wondering if you’re too sensitive. If you really did hurt them as much as they claim you did. There’s a small part of you that wonders if you actually deserved to be treated poorly because of what you said or did or because of who you are.

    Deep down you know it was abuse, and even now as you break free, a part of you knows what happened to you was wrong, that it wasn’t your fault.

    It’s hard to hear that part of you though. You’re numb, shut down, and drained. You don’t know what you want or what you need. You don’t even know what you should be doing right now or who you really are.

    You’re not used to having the freedom to choose what you want to do. You became used to being told how you should feel and act.

    “Does it get better, will it get easier, or will I always feel like this?” you ask.

    I’m here to tell you that it can get better. If you do the work required to heal, not only will you be able to feel again, you will feel a sense of awareness unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. You will clear away the ashes of these broken relationships and open yourself up to healthier ones. Relationships that affirm the person you have become.

    People will tell you to get over your past and move on. Ignore that advice. Sometimes you can’t just get over something, especially if it was traumatic.

    Instead, lean into your pain and understand it. Recognize the positive ways it has shaped you. Maybe because of it you’re more empathetic and more in tune to others’ emotions, and maybe, if you’re like me, you’re motivated to help others so that they’re not alone with their pain.

    Ask yourself how the abuse motivated you. Did you strive to prove yourself and accomplish more than you ever thought possible? Were you able to unlearn the things they taught you about yourself? Are you where you are in life because of it?

    I’m not saying that the abuse was a good thing. I’m saying that we can create good things as a result of bad situations. Lean into that and reflect on it, because I have learned that if you can find something positive to hold onto, it gives the pain a sense of transformative purpose. 

    Draw a picture, write a poem, or write a letter to yourself reflecting on what happened and try to let go of any thoughts, feelings, or beliefs that keep you stuck. Take your time, feel your feelings, and tell yourself your feelings are okay.

    Sometimes when you have lived in survival mode for so long, having to shut off your feelings altogether, you can feel numb for weeks, months, or even years. When someone says “feel your feelings” you don’t even know what that means. Instead, you go through the motions pretending to feel what people expect you to feel, acting in the way that you think you should.

    I want you to remember that you don’t have to force anything. There is no right way to feel in this situation, and no one has the right to tell you what you should and should not be feeling right now. These are your feelings and your lived experiences.

    If you’re feeling numb you might ask, will I ever feel again? In time you will, and if you give yourself permission to feel whatever it is that you have suppressed things will get easier and you will start to feel like yourself again.

    I have learned that you can only suppress feelings for so long before they bubble to the surface forcing you to feel the pain, to relive the experiences and actually feel them.

    It sounds scary, and I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t hurt. But feeling the pain will make you feel whole again because not only have you numbed the bad things, but you’ve numbed the good as well. Feeling the pain will lead to a sense of peace and you will be able to experience joy and happiness again. I know because I have been there.

    Get to know yourself. The abuse caused you to lose sight of your wants, needs, feelings, and sense of self. Now you have the exciting task of rediscovering those things and reinventing yourself.

    You might think that getting to know yourself is selfish or that focusing on your own wants and needs is wrong. There is nothing wrong or selfish about learning about yourself. In doing this you will be in a better position to help others; you will be happier, healthier, and become the person you were truly meant to be.

    Ignore the voice inside your head that says, “I can’t, I am not good/capable enough.” Ask yourself where that voice came from. It is really your voice, or did someone else’s voice find its way into your head?

    How can you rediscover yourself when you don’t even know who you are or what you want anymore? Start small—notice the foods you like to eat and take note things you enjoy doing. Sign up for personality and aptitude tests such as The Myers Briggs, The VIA institute, and Best Instruments. Don’t use these tools to define you but as a guide to help discover yourself.

    Ask yourself hard questions such as: What do I want my life to look like? What activities bring me joy? What have I always wanted to do, and what have I regretted not doing in the past? Maybe you’ve always wanted to travel the world, attend university, take a cooking class, learn to play a musical instrument, run a marathon, or own a pet.

    Open a notebook or a word document and write down 100 things that you want to do, see, achieve, learn, or experience. Don’t think, just write in a stream of consciousness. If you start to think when doing this activity, you will start to second guess yourself.

    Once you’ve written as many things as you can think of, put the notebook/Word document away. Return to it a few days later and ask yourself how many of these things you can do now, in the next six months, in the next year, or in the next ten years. Then start making a plan.

    I do this activity every year, and every year It helps me rekindle my passion for life and create a sense of purposeful focus.

    You might think you don’t deserve the life you dream of, but the truth is that you do! Your happiness and fulfillment matters.

    You might think you can’t do any of the things you put on your list, but I’m here to tell you that you can! You might need to take baby steps, but the smallest steps toward the life you want are still steps in the right direction.

    If you want to go to college/university start by exploring schools/prospective programs. If you want to become a chef, start by asking if you can observe/volunteer to help a local chef. If you want to start your own business, start by doing some research about what resources you might need or what skills you might like to develop.

    If you want something badly enough you will explore limiting beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that prevent you from achieving your goals, and you will find a way or maybe even find something along the way that’s better.

    If you think that the people in your life might try and dissuade you from pursuing your new goals, hold on tight to these dreams and keep them to yourself. I have learned that sometimes showing people that you have enrolled in college or taken some form of action is much better then asking for their permission or giving them room to judge you.

    Remind yourself that you don’t need to have everything figured out, that you don’t always need to know what is going to happen next. If you take positive steps toward the life you want, you will see progress over time.

    Let yourself dream, let yourself feel, and give yourself permission to be the amazing person you are.

    If you start to discover yourself and learn to live with the abuse that has shaped you, life will be better then you could ever have imagined. A life of fulfillment, happiness, positive relationships, and achievements greater than you could have ever imagined is possible. And no matter what your abuser told you, you absolutely deserve it.

  • How I Created Opportunities in a World Full of Obstacles

    How I Created Opportunities in a World Full of Obstacles

    “I really want to, but I can’t because [add semi-valid reason here].”

    That’s a template sentence to let yourself off the hook.

    It’s not copyrighted, so feel free to use it any time you want to let go of your dreams and not feel bad about it.

    Honestly, it hurts me every time I hear someone say it. I see it for what it is—an excuse.

    Every single one of us has ambitions, hopes, dreams, and goals. We fantasize about them on our commutes to work and before we sleep. We talk about how we will one day achieve them, but when it comes time to put them to action, we use that template sentence.

    I had every reason to use the template sentence. I live in a third-world country in the Middle East. We suffer from a lack of water, electricity, security, and opportunities—especially for girls.

    In the Western world, if you want to learn a new skill, you sign up for a training course, get a book, find articles online, or join a club. It’s different here. Here, we don’t have training courses, libraries, or clubs, and the internet is slower than a snail crawling through peanut butter.

    During my teen years, I felt stuck in my life. I wanted to learn so many things and achieve my wildest dreams, yet I couldn’t. How was I supposed to impact people when I would only leave the house to go to school on the weekdays and grocery shopping on the weekends?

    I read stories of kids my age winning science fairs and inventing devices to solve the world’s leading issues. Yet, there I was, wasting my time at home, waiting five minutes for a single webpage to load.

    I had always imagined what my life would be like, and this is not what I had pictured. Time was passing me by, and my talents and ambitions were going to waste.

    I wanted to have an impact, but I couldn’t because I didn’t have the opportunities to learn and gain experience and feedback. (Notice the template sentence.)

    This way of thinking was eating away at my soul. Day after day, I found myself sinking into a pit of misery. I would spend my days lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. There was nothing I could do to change my life, so why try?

    One day, I had had enough. I had been lying in bed for days. It had been years since anything amazing had happened to me. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t accept the fact that this would be my life. There was an itch under my skin to make my life worth living.

    “Life is too short to waste it moping about the hand of cards life had served me,” I thought. I didn’t care what it would take. I would do whatever I could to get myself out of the hole I was in.

    I decided to use the resources I had to create the future I dreamed. “Bloom where you are planted” became my life motto. What I had access to at the time was the internet.

    In order to get out of the country I was in, I concluded that I’d need a scholarship. I set my mind on getting the Japanese Monbusho Scholarship. I found blogs, articles, and books online to become fluent in Japanese. I practiced day in and day out. I tried a plethora of different methods to learn new words and perfect my grammar. In a few months, I was able to hold a simple conversation in Japanese.

    I also realized that I would need money. I wasn’t allowed to go out and get a job. This was an obstacle I had trouble accepting. I tried to convince my parents to let me work, but they refused for my safety. My mother introduced me to the concept of passive income and showed me blogs that were making six figures every month!

    I set out to build a hedgehog care website. Every day, after school, I would research hedgehogs and write detailed articles about how to feed them, groom them, play with them, and anything else one would need to know. I went on like this for 3 years, studying Japanese and writing about hedgehogs.

    I’m sure you’re expecting a spirit-lifting ending where I travel to Japan and live off my flourishing website. That’s not how this story ends.

    I didn’t get the scholarship. The fact is, I didn’t even get the chance to apply. I ended up studying in my third-world country. I was crushed. I didn’t want to, but it was either study here or not study at all. Unwilling to accept the facts, I started an online university the next year. I now study at two universities simultaneously.

    As for the hedgehog website, it made me a total of $60 for the three years of work I put into it.

    I can stand here and tell you that I tried, but it didn’t work out. That’d be a lie. It did work out—just not the way I expected.

    I’m not in Japan, but I know how to speak Japanese and have met many interesting people along the way. I learned from them and gained experience just as I hoped I one day would. And instead of one major, I now have two, both of which I enjoy learning about.

    My hedgehog website didn’t succeed, but I created a new one that’s even better with the expertise I gained. I interact with my readers often, helping them find ways they can live their dreams. I love hearing their stories and learning how I helped them build better habits or make their goals a reality.

    I still live in the same country I did before. I still have to wait five minutes for a webpage to load. However, I know that even though the obstacles are always there—and always will be—they have nothing to do with happiness, fulfillment, success, peace, and satisfaction. Some people have it better than others, and some have it worse, but every single person, regardless of circumstance, can control their mindset.

    I didn’t let my obstacles stand in my way, and I created my own opportunities when I found none. In an instant, anyone can decide to embrace the cards they’ve been dealt and create their own unique way to shuffle, redistribute, alter, or mold them into a winning hand.

  • How I Developed Self-Worth After Being Sexually Harassed and Fired

    How I Developed Self-Worth After Being Sexually Harassed and Fired

    “Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~Unknown

    In my early twenties, I was a food and beverage manager at a nice hotel in Portland, Maine. About a month after I started working there, they hired our department director, a man twice my age whom I would report to.

    At the end of his first week, we went out for a “get to know each other” drink at a loud and busy bar. As we drank and chatted, he was physically very close to me. I told myself it was because of the noise.

    His knees were against mine as we chatted facing each other on barstools. It made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t do anything about it. He put his hand on my thigh as we talked. I pretended it didn’t bother me.

    He leaned in very close to my face and ear as he talked about himself and told me how attractive I was. He led me through doorways with his hand gently on the small of my back.

    There was more of this over the next few months. More of him stepping on and just over that invisible line. More of me acting as though I was okay with it and convincing myself that I was.

    A few months after that night, he and I were in a position to fire a male employee who had several complaints against him for not doing his work.

    The morning before the firing, Human Resources pulled me into their office to tell me that this employee had lodged a complaint about my boss and me. He had said that he knew we were going to fire him, and he believed it was because my boss and I were having an affair. His “proof” was that he saw us at the bar that Friday night and saw us “kissing.” There was even a line cook who backed up his story.

    A few days later, both of these employees admitted that they didn’t exactly see us kissing, they just saw us talking very closely together, and it looked intimate.

    HR dropped the complaint but no longer felt comfortable with firing this employee, so he stayed on. A few weeks later after a busy event that went poorly due to being understaffed, I was taken into the CEO’s office, and I was fired.

    The male employee continued working there. My male boss continued working there. The male employee was promoted to take my now vacant position. My male boss was promoted to work at a larger resort at a tropical destination.

    These two events—being accused of having an affair with my married older boss, and subsequently being fired for an event that I wasn’t even in charge of staffing—were the two lowest points of my professional career.

    I honestly rarely think back to this time in my life, but I also recently realized that I never talk about this experience because of my embarrassment that I let this happen without objection.

    What This Story is Really About

    I didn’t think that my boss would hurt me. I wasn’t even worried that I would lose my job if I pushed back. I was afraid that if I acted like someone who was bothered by his comments, I would be seen as a lame, no fun, boring, stuck-up prude.

    I subconsciously believed that my worthiness as a person was determined by people who were cooler than me, more successful than me, smarter than me, or more liked than me.

    I believe that had I told my boss “no,” he would have listened. I’d gotten to know him over several months, and while he was egotistical, dim-witted, and selfish, I think he would have respected my boundaries had I set them. I just never did.

    There are a lot of layers to this story. Far too many to cover in one post.

    But the reason for writing this today is to share what I was so ashamed of. I was ashamed that young, twenty-something me was so insecure and so afraid of rejection that her people-pleasing led to allowing this man to touch her and act inappropriately.

    She was so afraid that if she set a boundary and said “no” she would be seen as too emotional, weak, and a complainer. She would become “less than.”

    I’ll restate that there are a lot of layers to this; from the patriarchal system at this business (and society as a whole), to the abuse of men in power, to mixed messages at high school where girls were not allowed to wear certain clothes because the boys would get distracted, to a lack of examples through the 90s/early 2000’s of what it looks like for a young woman to stand up for herself in a situation like this, and far beyond.

    But the part of the story I want to focus on right now is my insecurity. This is the part of the story that I had the most shame and regret about, because this was not an isolated incident for me.

    Insecurity was a Trend Throughout My Life

    People-pleasing was a huge problem for me in several areas of my life for many years. It’s something that held me back from so much.

    • I didn’t leave a long relationship that I’d dreamt of ending for fear that I would disappoint our families.
    • I let people walk all over me, interrupt me while I spoke, and tell me what I should think.
    • In my late twenties I remember being home alone, again, crying that I had no one who would want to spend time with me or go somewhere with me, feeling sad and lonely, when in reality I was just too scared and embarrassed to pick up the phone and ask, for fear of rejection.

    I wasted so many years and felt a lot of pain, and a whole lot of nothing happened as I was stuck. Stuck feeling worthless, unlikable, and unknowing how to “please” my way out of it.

    I spent years numbing how uncomfortable my insecurity made me feel by smoking a lot of pot. I avoided what I came to realize were my triggers by staying home or finding excuses to leave early if I did go out. I blamed everyone else for how they made me feel. I compared myself to everyone and constantly fell short.

    Until eventually, I realized the cause for all this pain and discomfort was believing my worth was based on what other people thought of me.

    The Emotional Toolbox That Saved Me

    If I could go back in time to give myself one thing, it would be the emotional toolbox that I’ve collected over the years so that I could stop living to please other people, because I know now that I am inherently worthy.

    By my thirties I found myself on a journey to lift the veil of insecurity that hid me from my real self. This wall I’d inadvertently built to protect myself was keeping me from seeing who I really was beneath my fear and anxiety.

    Once I found the courage to start tearing down that wall and opening myself to the vulnerability necessary to truly connect with the real me, I was able to discern between who I am and what I do. I learned to stop judging myself. I learned my true value. And I liked what I saw.

    Finding My Core Values

    I came to realize that it’s hard to feel worthy when you don’t really like yourself. And it’s even harder to genuinely like yourself if you don’t truly know yourself. Figuring out my core values was a crucial part of the puzzle.

    Core values are the beliefs, principles, ideals, and traits that are most important to you. They represent what you stand for, what you’re committed to, and how you want to operate in the world.

    Knowing your core values is like having a brighter flashlight to get through the woods at night. It shines a light on the path ahead—a path that aligns with your true self—so that you can show up in the world and to challenging situations as the person you want to be.

    It helps you decide in any given scenario if you want to be funny or compassionate, direct or easy-going, decisive or open-minded. These aren’t easy decisions to make, but knowing how you want to be in this world helps you make the decisions that best align with your authentic self.

    And when you truly know yourself and act intentionally and authentically in tune with your values (as best as you can) a magical thing happens: You connect with your own inherent worthiness.

    For me, I came to realize that I am a compassionate, kind, courageous, funny, well-balanced woman constantly in pursuit of purposeful growth. I like that person. She’s cool. I’d hang out with her.

    More importantly, I believe she is a good person deserving of respect. Which means I don’t need to accept situations that cross my boundaries. I have a right to speak up when something makes me uncomfortable.

    So how do you want to be? Which of your principles and qualities matter most to you? And what would you do or change if you chose to let those principles and qualities guide you?

    Connecting With Others About My Shame

    Shame breeds in the darkness. We don’t normally speak up about the things that we feel embarrassed about. And that leads to us feeling isolated and alone with how we feel.

    Whether it’s reading stories online, talking with friends, joining a support group, going to therapy, or working with a coach, share and listen. A vital component of self-compassion is learning to connect over our shared experiences. And it takes self-compassion to respect and believe in our own self-worth, especially when confronted with our inner critic.

    By sharing my feelings of insecurity, I learned that a beautiful friend of mine also felt ugly. I thought, “Wow, if someone that gorgeous could think of herself as anything less than, my thinking might be wrong too.” I found out that even talented celebrities from Lady Gaga to Arianna Huffington to Maya Angelou have all felt insecure about their abilities. That somehow gave me permission to feel the way that I did, which was the first step in letting it go.

    Who can you connect with? If you’re not sure, or you aren’t at a place yet in your journey to feel comfortable doing that, perhaps start by reading stories online.

    Coaching Myself Through Insecurity

    Alas, I am only human. Therefore, I still fall victim to moments of insecurity and feel tempted to let other people dictate my worth. Knowing that purposeful growth is important to me, I know that the work continues, and I’m willing to do it.

    So I coach myself through those challenging times when I say something stupid and worry about being judged or I come across someone who is similar to me, but more successful and fear that means I’m not good enough. I’ll ask myself questions as a way of stepping out of self-judgment mode, and into an open and curious mindset. These are questions like:

    • If my good friend was experiencing this, how would I motivate her?
    • Did I do the best I could with what I had?
    • If the universe gave me this experience for a reason, what lesson am I supposed to be learning so that I can turn this into a meaningful experience?
    • What uncomfortable thing am I avoiding? Am I willing to be uncomfortable in order to go after what I want?

    Or I’ll break out the motivational phrases that remind me of my capabilities or worthiness like:

    • I can do hard things.
    • My worthiness is not determined by other people’s opinions.
    • This is just one moment in time, and it will pass.
    • Even though this is difficult, I’m willing to do it.
    • I forgive myself for making a mistake. I’ve learned from it and will do better next time.

    Tools like these are simple, but priceless. They gave me my life. And I can say now without hesitation, I like myself, I love myself, I love my life, I’m worthy as hell, and I’m my own best friend. That’s how I want to live my life.

    Because of this, I have the confidence to speak my truth with courage, and I have the confidence to live authentically and unapologetically myself. And the number one person I’m most concerned with pleasing is myself.

  • The Simple Path to Change When You’re Not Satisfied with Your Life

    The Simple Path to Change When You’re Not Satisfied with Your Life

    “Making a big life change is scary, but you know what’s even scarier? Regret.” ~Zig Ziglar

    Fifteen years ago, I made one of the biggest changes in my life. It was something I had wanted to do for so long but had never found the right time, right plan, or courage to do.

    You see, ever since I was in my teens, I had always felt I was meant to be somewhere else.

    The town where I grew up was pretty perfect for raising young kids, but it just wasn’t for me as I entered adulthood. I always envisioned myself somewhere else doing something different than those that stayed and replaced the generations before them.

    When I came back from school in my twenties, I was eager to get my career going and was not in a rush to settle down and have kids like most of my circle. I wasn’t even sure I really wanted to raise a family. I was more interested in exploring this world and not being tied to one way of life.

    At twenty-five I thought, WOW, I finally feel like I’ve got it all figured out.

    I had lived away from home, finished school, had relationships both good and bad, and had a strong work ethic that was instilled in me from a young age. So here I was, ready to take on the world. Build my career, travel, and maybe eventually settle down and start a family… then BANG! Just like that my world started to crumble.

    Within a span of one year, I was dealt some devastating news. My mother and sister were both diagnosed with different devastating diseases.

    My world was crushed. I can still remember the impact I felt on the day I received the news.

    I was in my office when I got the call about my sister, who had lost her speech and ability to move one of her arms and possibly needed emergency brain surgery.

    I was in shock. I had no idea how I felt, what I was supposed to do, or where I was supposed to be. I just sat there with a blank stare for what felt like an eternity but really was likely just five minutes.

    After weeks of testing, it was discovered my sister had MS (Multiple Sclerosis). A life-long debilitating disease, or so I understood at the time.

    Fast forward six-plus months later, my sister was on track with rehabilitation and signs of a full recovery in speech and limb mobility. Then WHAM! My mother received a stage 3 cancer diagnosis.

    I was absolutely devastated and completely torn apart. My mother is everything to me, the woman who inspires me to stand tall and strong no matter what life throws my way. A woman of pure integrity and authenticity, loved by so many.

    After emergency surgery and intense chemo, I am glad to say that both my mum and sister survived their devastating ordeals and have been living life to the fullest since that awful time. But during that time my world was upside down and I was an emotional wreck.

    I had no idea how to unravel all the emotions I was feeling then. I kept myself busy, though, with work, too much partying, and hitting the gym hard. You see, I kept myself looking good on the outside, but I was a complete mess on the inside. I was no longer thriving; I was just surviving.

    I began taking inventory of my life and realized I was not living the life I’d envisioned for myself. I was scared to make a change and also to not make a change.

    Seeing what my family had endured made me realize how precious life is and that I didn’t want to waste mine living a life that didn’t fulfill me in fear I was next for a diagnosis. So, I decided to seek out professional help to gain control and clarity, to heal, and to push through the emotions I was suffering from. Only then would I be able to truly move forward with my life in a positive and productive way.

    Once I had done the “work” on sorting out my emotions, I was able to start creating real change from a healthy, sound perspective.

    I started creating the life that resonated with me one step at a time. You see, change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to build. It is a process, and anyone who has made significant change in their lives will tell you that. Their change likely started way before anyone was really aware.

    I wasn’t living the life I wanted, so I thought long and hard about what needed to change and finally took the leap.

    I moved across the country on my own, away from my most significant support, with no job, to start building a life that resonates with me. It wasn’t without challenge or bumps in the road, and it certainly wasn’t perfect. But it’s been absolutely amazing, and I’ve never looked back.

    Besides the emotional trauma, there were so many things holding me back at first—family, friends, familiarity, and fear. But what I’ve come to realize is when you start making positive change in your life, for you, things fall into place over time and you look back and realize the change was worth it.

    People speak from their own feelings, experiences, and fears, don’t let that hold you back from what feels right to you.

    I now live in a place that felt like home from the first time I landed here. I live by the ocean and mountains, which inspire me every day.

    My sister now lives in the same city (in fact, we live the same complex). My brother and his family moved a one-hour flight away now as opposed to across the country. My mother still resides back in the town where I grew up so, I feel I get the best of both worlds. Living in a place that inspires me while having the chance to revisit a vibrant city and old friends to reminisce with whenever I choose to.

    So, what are the top things people say they regret as they get older? I wish I’d….

    • Saved more money or made better investments
    • Worked in a job or career I was more passionate about
    • Treated my body better and had better self-care
    • Spent more time with loved ones
    • Traveled more

    And the list goes on…

    Why do so many people rush through life without taking the time to recalibrate and ensure they are focused on the right things that mean something to them or will enrich their lives? It’s an intricate topic yet simple. Life. Life gets in the way, responsibilities get in the way, others’ opinions, and our own doubts and fears get in the way.

    We’ve all been there, navigating life as it unravels each day, and as things happen, we go with the flow. But have you ever stopped to consider, what’s my “flow”?

    How do I want this day, month, year to go? Why do I keep getting dragged in other directions or the same direction only to live each day with no change? Why does it seem like others are thriving while I am on repeat or treading without progressing?

    You will never know for sure until you take the time to explore what is going on in your life and create awareness around what might be holding you back. With the right support and guidance, you can create change both big and small. In fact, making little changes frequently will add up to making a big change overall.

    Not sure where to start? Here are five proven tips to begin creating change in your life today.

    1. Break the routine.

    Think about what you can give up or take out of your day to switch up your daily routine and do this for a two-week period. This could mean not scrolling mindlessly through social media on your lunch break or not watching TV at night, then seeing what else you could do instead. Which brings me to my next point…

    2. Bring back doing something you love and make it a deal breaker in your week.

    No excuses, make it happen, even you only have a fifteen-minute window for this activity. Same as above, do this for a two-week period, and this next one, as well.

    3. Discover something new.

    What have you always considered trying out or have an interest in that you’ve never explored? Give it a try now.

    4. Journal.

    Keep notes on how you are feeling through the two weeks. Then do it all for another two weeks.

    5. Build intention.

    Each week set the intention that there is time, this is worth it, and you are worth it!

    —

    The purpose of this process is to help you see how even small shifts can change how you feel and add to your life and well-being. This sets the foundation for believing that change gives more than it takes, which helps you find the motivation to seek out new opportunities so you can make larger life changes. Move if you don’t feel thrilled with where you live, sign up for a course to help you change careers, or finally leave the job you hate to do something you love.

    It takes focus, consistency, and perseverance to make change, but everyone has the ability to do it, especially if they start small and take it one day at a time.

    Surround yourself with those that will respect you and the changes you are making. I bet you’ll be surprised to see how many people are inspired and/or motivated to begin making their own changes after watching you. So don’t wait—start today and open up to change so you can live the life you want to live!

  • One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    “You become what you believe, not what you think or what you want.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    What do you believe? During the forced stillness of the pandemic environment we’re all living in, this is a question I’ve been faced with more intensely than ever. In particular, I’ve come to question what I believe about myself, and how that impacts every element of my life.

    Coming out of years of self-help for social and general anxiety, a long-standing eating disorder, and several dissatisfying personal relationships, I had to come to question what these external realities reflected back to me. For what you believe about not only your life, but more importantly, yourself, will show up again and again, and yes, again, until you’ve finally addressed the root of the problem.

    In my case, my lack of self-value resulted in many dysfunctions and setbacks in my personal and professional world.

    My deteriorating self-image led to my eating obsessions, a lack of confidence exacerbated anxieties, and the low value I placed on myself was most likely written all over me, judging by the way others showed disrespect toward me in personal relationships.

    Not only was I devaluing who I was, but I also operated from a place of being closed off to others, afraid that if I showed my true self I wouldn’t measure up to their expectations.

    This all came to a head when COVID-19 emerged and led to a global lockdown. Going off of numerous negative relationship experiences, I visited a doctor to discover I had a pelvic floor condition called vaginismus, which results in involuntary vaginal muscle tightening that makes sex and physical exams like pap smears either impossible or extremely painful.

    I spent the next four months going through physical therapy to heal my body from this condition, breaking off a new relationship to focus completely on my own journey. It amazed me how the mind and body go hand-in-hand; my muscle tightening felt like a total embodiment of years of being closed off to others and remaining safely isolated from sharing my true self.

    As I mentioned previously, prior to being diagnosed with vaginismus I’d spent years healing my mental health problems and gaining strength in my career experience.

    After high school, I was lost in my career path for a solid period of time, making lukewarm attempts at artistic endeavors such as acting and modeling, never fully prepared to take a leap and fully immerse myself in any one field.

    Again, this would require a bearing of my true self that would frighten me just to think about. Not only that, it would mean that I had the nerve to believe I was worthy of attempting a profession that’s reserved for an elite group of “special” people, a group I never considered myself to be a part of.

    I did muster up enough courage to move to Los Angeles, however, where I felt I could start a new identity. My Northern California roots felt outdated, and along with some family I sought to better myself with a fresh start.

    One of my first steps toward positive changes was a hostessing gig at a bowling alley, which forced me to get out of my shell and be more social for a change. I still felt very self-conscious, but the more I worked on interacting with customers and coworkers, the more I learned how much I loved people.

    This further developed when, following a chance Intro to Journalism course I took at Pasadena City College in Southern California, I found a new joy that I wasn’t expecting.

    I began to love writing, and not only that, my favorite element of this new career path was interviewing—something I never thought I’d be able to conquer with the severity of my social anxiety, which prevented me from going into grocery stores at its peak

    Deep down, I started to believe that something different could be possible for me. Maybe I could break out of my old mindset and turn into the person I’d always felt I was inside: someone who loved people, longed for and accomplished successful interpersonal relationships, and stood in her power, unapologetically.

    By January of 2020, I had gained a local job news writing in my home base of Burbank and felt optimistic about the future. After the pandemic hit, however, I went through a time of feeling down during isolation. This paired with the vaginismus diagnosis made me become initially quite frustrated.

    “Why is this happening to me?” I wondered. I had done a lot to overcome other personal issues, but now having to do months of diligent, and sometimes extremely painful, physical therapy felt like a punishment that I didn’t deserve.

    After a short bit of contemplation, however, I had a real and sudden shift in perspective. I simply thought, “I’ve been through more than this in the past. I’ll get through it.” I believed I could, and from that moment on dedicated myself to healing not only physically, but emotionally as well.

    Within four months I made enough progress to end in-person physical therapy appointments, I started blog writing and continued with news writing in Burbank, earned a journalism scholarship over the summer, which I contributed toward my studies, and now have just started my own independent journalism writing website.

    The more I believed that I could accomplish my goals, and the more I felt I was worthy of such things, the more I saw everything in the universe work for me, and not against me.

    Today I continue to improve my self-image, and I have a long way to go. But overall, I feel healed from where I once was.

    I’m pursuing my passions, now unashamed to show and share who I truly am.

    I demonstrate a great deal of self-respect in personal relationships, no longer tolerating poor treatment from others who don’t consider my worth.

    My diet and exercise habits are healthier, my vaginismus treatment is complete, and, although I still have to maintain physical therapy exercises, I feel grateful for where I’m at in that regard and in every aspect of my life.

    If you had asked me five years ago, prior to all of this self-improvement, what I believed about myself and my life, I probably would have said I had a promising future ahead, although my actions and interactions continuously showed otherwise.

    This is why I feel I’m at a much more positive place in life at this moment.

    Not only do I propose that I believe positive things about myself, but I now show it through my actions.

    I no longer want respect, I demand it.

    I no longer want to pursue my goals wholeheartedly, I now do it as much as I can every day.

    And not only do I dream of expressing the truth of who I am, I embody it.

    So, if you too feel like you’re stuck in a rut in your life, if you feel that the world isn’t treating you fairly, and if you don’t like what the universe is showing you, then I urge you to ask yourself:

    What do you believe? About yourself? Your worth? Your life? Your potential?

    What do you believe about what you deserve, in relationships and in your career, and what you can accomplish if you try?

    How do those beliefs affect how you show up in the world—the decisions you make, the chances you take, the things you tolerate, and the habits you follow each day?

    What would you do differently if you challenged your beliefs and recognized they’re not facts?

    And what can you do differently today to create a different outcome for tomorrow?

    These are the questions that shape our lives because our beliefs drive our choices, which ultimately determine who we become.

  • Where Our Strength Comes from and What It Means to Be Strong

    Where Our Strength Comes from and What It Means to Be Strong

    “Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t.” ~Rikki Rogers

    A friend recently asked me: Andi, where does your strength come from?

    It took me a while before I had a good enough answer for her. I sat contemplating the many roads I’ve traveled, through my own transformational journey and the inspirational journeys of all my clients who demonstrate incredible strength for me.

    I moved to a different country, alone, at eighteen years old and have changed careers, battled a complex pain diagnosis with my child, and lost loved ones. I am now living through a global pandemic, like all of us, and most recently, I am recovering from a traumatic, unexpected surgery. Life has many surprises for us, indeed.

    So where does strength really come from?

    I wish I knew the precise answer to this question so that I could share the secret sauce with you right now, and you could have full access to all the strength you’ll ever need to achieve whatever it is that you really want. (Even the deeply challenging stuff and the tremendously scary stuff. All of it.)

    I do know this:

    Strength is a personal measurement for a truly unique, subjective experience. It’s entirely up to you to decide what strong means for you.

    And I also know this…

    Strength comes from doing hard things. It comes from showing up despite the pain or fear and going through the struggle, the endurance, and then building on that, to keep going forward and upward.

    Strength comes from taking the time to notice and acknowledge what you have managed to do and accomplish until now. So much of the time we go through things without realizing what massive effort something took, and we minimize the entire experience because we only focus on the end result and not the process.

    Strength comes from paying close attention to the small but significant steps and wins and incremental gains along the way. Strength comes from tracking progress and celebrating it one tiny bit at a time.

    Strength comes from within—from moments of activating your highest faith and belief. Knowing why you do what you do, even when it’s not easy.

    Strength comes from aligning with your core values and living with integrity even when no one is watching, and you aren’t in the mood. When we connect to what truly matters to us, we are stronger. When we believe there is a bigger plan and are hopeful about an outcome, we feel stronger. Even if we don’t know why.

    Strength comes from without—by surrounding ourselves with people who lift us up and see our worth, even when we sometimes forget. It comes from choosing to envelop yourself with kindness, inspiration, motivation, and gratitude. It comes from selecting role models and learning from them. It comes from seeing ourselves through others’ eyes—especially those who see our greatness and light when all we see is our flaws, weaknesses, and shortcomings.

    Strength comes from grabbing lessons and blessings, often dressed up as awful mistakes and painful failures.

    Strength comes from collecting moments you are genuinely proud of and taking the time to truly recognize these events for what they are and what they enabled you to accomplish. Don’t overlook them. You get to use these strengths in countless ways and in other areas of your life as much as you want to.

    Strength comes from knowing yourself. As you begin to discover and unmask more of you, you get to make choices that honor more of you, and you get to live your purpose and be more of who you really are. When we know better, we do better.

    The strongest people I know have had insurmountable trials. They know what to say yes to and how to say no. They know how to be proud of themselves with humility and honesty. They know how to pick their circles wisely and accept help, compliments, and advice.

    The strongest people I know cry a lot and feel everything.

    The strongest people I know are the kindest.

    The strongest people I know have wells of inner resources that are invisible to the naked eye.

    The strongest people I know can say sorry and forgive others.

    The strongest people I know can forgive themselves.

    The strongest people I know fall down hard, and slowly, with every ounce of courage, bravery, and might, find a way to get back up again, battered, bruised, and aching.

    The strongest people I know have incredible hearts that expand wider with each hurdle.

    The strongest people I know have endured so much and yet still find their smile to light up the world for others.

    The strongest people I know teach me every single day how to try and be just a little bit stronger myself.

  • Learning to Honor My Grief When the World Has Become Desensitized to Loss

    Learning to Honor My Grief When the World Has Become Desensitized to Loss

    “The answer to the pain of grief is not how to get yourself out of it, but how to support yourself inside it.” ~Unknown 

    Since losing my husband Matt over eight months ago to cancer at the age of just thirty-nine, I have noticed so many changes happening within me, and one of those changes is a fierce sense of protectiveness that I have over my grief.

    We are living in a unique time in history. The world has turned upside down due to the coronavirus pandemic, and at the time of writing this the UK had just passed 100,000 Covid-related deaths with many more not involving Covid.

    That is an obscene amount of grieving people, and when I also consider the fact that not all loss is related to death, I suspect that everyone in the country is experiencing grief on some level right now.

    But I worry that this universal loss has become so entrenched within our daily lives that it is now considered the norm to be traumatized.

    The news of more deaths no longer seems to shock us. We’ve become detached from each other in order to survive and preserve ourselves, and this is being reinforced daily with messages of staying home and socially distancing.

    Our human need for closeness and connection has become secondary to the very real threat to life we are facing, and so we willingly obey to these new rules—we wear masks and keep away from each other, we retreat, and we don’t complain about the psychological wounds we are facing as a result of this because the alternative is even worse.

    There is a collective sense of numbness, which is a well-known coping mechanism for extreme levels of stress, and I cannot help but tune into this from my own fear response.

    I also feel numb sometimes, and I can certainly see the rationale for adopting this defense mechanism, but this is why my grief feels like a gift to me now: I am thankful that I can connect with and embrace my feelings of pain and anguish. This is my healing; this is me moving through life as I know I was intended to do.

    We weren’t made to deny or repress our emotions, we were made to learn and grow through them, because emotions are energy and energy needs to move. When I refuse to allow my emotions space to be present within me, they become trapped inside. 

    I know this because it has happened to me before. Grief is strange, it is the most painful and intense experience I have ever had, and yet it is also recognizable to me. I know that I have felt it before but in a different form and at a different time.

    Deep down I also have an inner knowing that I am meant to feel it. In the past, I was scared of the enormity and intensity of my emotions, and so was everyone I was close to. They would recoil when I expressed them, so I would repress them instead and do everything I could to push them down.

    The result? Years of suffering with anxiety, depression, and unexplained physical illness and ailments, which I now understand to be a manifestation of my trapped trauma.

    Bessel Van der Kolk defines trauma as “not being seen or known.” To be truly seen is to risk vulnerability, but we are continuously shamed for being truly vulnerable in our society, a society which rewards busyness and productivity above our human needs.

    Unfortunately, this mutual denial can prevent us from healing. In our culture there is a lack of tolerance for the emotional vulnerability that traumatized people experience. Little time is allotted for the working through of emotional events. We are routinely pressured into adjusting too quickly in the aftermath of an overwhelming situation.

    So, we have a problem. At a time when more of us than ever need to embrace vulnerability to avoid retraumatizing ourselves with a lack of connection to others, we are simultaneously battling with a sense of internalized capitalism. Which do we choose? Authenticity or attachment?

    I believe that we need both, but I also believe that it must start with authenticity, and here’s why.

    My grief feels sacred to me, like it’s the last bit of my love for Matt that I have left, and for that reason I refuse to let it pass me by without really experiencing and cherishing it.

    I recognize that the authentic, broken me is just as important as the joyful, whole me, and that I cannot expect to experience one without the other.

    I do not wish to drift into a false identity where I am always “okay” or “fine” or “not too bad” when anybody asks because really that is all I am permitted to say in those moments. I cannot speak the truth because the truth is unspeakable. There is an unspoken rule that we must never expose our pain in too much depth, we must keep it contained within a quick text message or a five-minute chat in order to help keep up the illusion that we have time for compassion within our culture.

    But we all know that’s not the truth if you live as we are subliminally told to live—with a full-time, demanding, and challenging career and a mortgage to pay, with a family to look after and a social life to uphold, with a strict routine that includes time for exercise, meal planning, and keeping your appearance aligned with what is currently deemed socially attractive, and with just enough spare time to mindlessly consume the latest Netflix drama.

    It really leaves little to no time or the emotional energy it would take to fully witness another person’s pain. So, we turn away from it instead, because we know that if we dare to look a grieving person in the eye, we can locate the universal phenomenon of grief within ourselves and find some affinity to it. And that throws up all sorts of questions that go against our busy lifestyles we are grappling to keep hold of.

    When I have too many superficial exchanges, however well-meaning they are, I end up feeling more disconnected and lonelier than if I hadn’t had an exchange at all, so I choose solitude instead. 

    Some pain cannot be spoken of, it can only be felt, and for me, that can only happen when I have the space and time to intentionally tune into the feelings, without having to cognitively bypass them at every opportunity. However, without a witness to my pain, I never truly feel seen or known either.

    The more time that passes, the harder it is to bring Matt up in the brief conversations I am still able to have or to express my true feelings.

    I’m aware that with time my grief becomes less relevant as more and more people are experiencing their own losses. But I have barely even begun to process Matt’s death. He died during the pandemic, and I am still living in that same pandemic eight months on. I have been locked away for my own safety and for the safety of others, so the true effects of my loss and the trauma attached to it won’t be fully felt until the threat has lifted.

    My brain has been wired for survival for almost a year now—what must the effects be of that?

    I am afraid that the rawness of my pain has a time limit to it, and if I do not fit into the cultural narrative of grief, then I will be rejected, and it’s that fear of rejection that continues to pull me away from sitting with my pain. I have become hypersensitive to other people’s reactions, and I can sense when my pain is too raw and uncomfortable for them, so I avoid the loudest and most consuming part of me to enter the conversation in order to make them more comfortable

    But… I’ve noticed a pattern happening when I prioritize others’ comfort over my authenticity.

    I begin to suffer. I experience emotions like fear, anger, and guilt, and these pull me away from the pure-ness that is my grief. Pain and suffering are not the same thing. Pain is a necessary component to healing and growth, but suffering is a bypassing of the raw pain underneath.

    I believe that the key to healing is to embrace the sorrow of loss throughout life. Loss happens continuously, but we often forget to experience it because we glorify the illusion of always being strong, mentally healthy, and resilient. 

    Fear is a block to healing. It activates our survival brain and keeps us there. Never feeling safe enough to process our emotions, we continue to suffer instead.

    Alice Miller, the renowned swiss psychologist, coined the phrase “enlightened witness” to refer to somebody who is able to recognize and hold your pain, and this becomes a cycle. Once you have had your authentic pain validated and witnessed, this frees up space for you to become an enlightened witness to another.

    That is why I believe there are so many people needlessly suffering right now. We are all afraid to confront the human condition of pain because we are afraid to lose our attachments to others, so we mask it and avoid it and deny it at any cost.

    I am terrified of losing my attachments to others too. I am terrified of ending up alone, and I am terrified of never being loved again. But I am more terrified of having to sacrifice my true self in order to gain that love.

    So, I vow not to put my grief on hold, and I welcome you to join me. However deep the pain becomes, I encourage you to sit with it and honor it as being a true reflection of the magnificent intensity of being human.

  • How I Finally Healed When I Stopped Believing a Diagnosis of Incurable

    How I Finally Healed When I Stopped Believing a Diagnosis of Incurable

    “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” ~Rumi

    The quarantine has felt oddly familiar. That’s because I spent thirteen years largely homebound with a mysterious, viral-like illness. It even started with a cold on a flight back from Asia in 2005.

    My nose was an open faucet, and my head felt like the cumulus clouds outside my window. When I returned to San Diego, I was so weak and exhausted, I could hardly get out of bed. My brain and body were on fire.

    I couldn’t focus or recall names of coworkers. Although I’d previously been able to fall asleep in action movies and moving vehicles, I suddenly had severe insomnia. I existed in a perpetual state of tired and wired.

    I tried desperately to return to my profession as a broadcast journalist. But what good is a reporter who can’t show up for the evening news? Eventually, I lost a career and life I loved and retreated into my house.

    Well before the word quarantine splashed across TV screens, I began to live inside my four walls. I left merely for trips to the grocery store, if that.

    Doctors diagnosed me with chronic fatigue syndrome. Untreatable, incurable, hopeless. Labs showed high titers of Epstein-Barr and other obscure viruses.

    Specialists homed in on faulty mitochondria or bad genetics. They had ancillary diagnoses, too: fibromyalgia, post-viral syndrome, leaky gut syndrome, candida overgrowth, adrenal fatigue, interstitial cystitis. Etcetera.

    They stacked up like weights on my shoulders. I collapsed into an unrecognizable me.

    At thirty-five, in the prime of my career with hopes of having my own family, I was deflated. My scant strength went into researching remedies, fighting health insurance denials, and trying to save my house from foreclosure.

    My life as a TV news reporter went into an endless commercial break. Then, dead air. I was stuck in this morass for years, trying everything from anti-viral IVs to energy healers.

    I saw the best specialists in CFS/ME. Plus, Tibetan and Chinese doctors, shamans, and therapists. I rewrote the traumas and tried to flush them out with enemas.

    Nothing moved the needle on my symptoms much—not diets, supplements, or medications. Some made it worse.

    After more than a decade of dashed hopes—and finally, a pipe-smoking healer who charged $200 to tell me about her cat—I let go of hopes that someone else could fix me and turned to simple and small reliefs. It’s not that I gave up on healing. I stopped frequenting sterile doctor’s offices and smoky dens.

    That freed up long afternoons to watch ravens and snails, read poetry, and write my own poems. I’d sink into the words of Rumi, Rilke, or Eckhart Tolle. I’d meditate, chant Sanskrit, take short walks, and stretch into restorative yoga poses.

    I luxuriated in simplicity and slowness as if there were nothing better on earth. I looked for what was given rather than what was taken away. A still and contented mind replaced my busy and accomplished life.

    There was an intrinsic connection with the living world. From this messy, real, surrendered state, something magical happened: I recovered.

    Through an online writing class, I met a woman who healed from CFS. Kathy told me her story and heard my story. She explained how she did it, and I had an instantaneous remission.

    I went from being bed-bound to running around the block. Many times!

    How could words make my symptoms disappear on the spot? Kathy told me about the little-known but groundbreaking work of Dr. John Sarno. The late physician from New York University Medical Center helped tens of thousands of patients recover from chronic pain, fatigue, headaches, and other stress-related conditions by teaching them the origin of their symptoms: the way the brain is processing stress due to overwhelming emotions.

    I’d heard the only truth that made sense about my symptoms. They were physical manifestations of tension and trauma, not so different from PTSD.

    I felt them in my body, but the cause was in my brain. This explained why the sensations moved around, came and went, and shifted in intensity. Tissue damage doesn’t act that way.

    If you’re walking on a broken leg, it doesn’t suddenly stop hurting. If you have a tumor, it won’t wax and wane.

    My nervous system was trying to warn me of danger. It had become stuck in fight, flight, or freeze mode. Like a broken record with a deep rut, my brain had learned patterns of pain and fatigue.

    But brains are neuroplastic. I could rewire mine to feel well again! Hope filled me like spoonfuls of medicine.

    Over the next year, I retrained my brain with gusto. It had associated so many things with harm: foods doctors told me not to eat, activities they warned me not to do, anything that reminded me of the initial trauma and all the dominoes to fall in its wake.

    I started feeling my body sensations with curiosity, while reminding myself I was safe. I spoke to my brain as one would a frightened child, with kindness and confidence.

    “I know you’re creating these symptoms, but they are not dangerous. There’s nothing wrong with my body. I am not sick. I am resilient and strong!”

    It may sound woo woo, but imaging shows self-affirmation activates the more logical prefrontal cortex over the reactive amygdala. You could say I became the adult in the room rather than the skittish kid or the catastrophizing parent.

    Next, I began challenging my triggers, doing things that brought on symptoms, which is to say almost everything. I took baby steps back into the world, with indifference to the fatigue, pain, and brain fog. Slowly but surely, they subsided.

    It was working! I was retraining my very own brain.

    I also started feeling my emotions, instead of my lifetime habit of repressing them. I mourned the loss of my career, child-rearing years, ability to climb a mountain or feel okay in my body.

    After years of being frozen, I started thawing. That brought tears, along with sadness, shame, and anger. I wrote angry letters (and didn’t send them). I started telling myself it was okay to feel whatever I feel (and pausing long enough for that to arise).

    It took thirteen years before I understood that healing does not happen in a disempowered state. We must take back our power. We must believe in our resilience, despite evidence to the contrary.

    We must connect with the part of us that is already well and keep our attention trained on that. It could be our little toe, the energy inside our body, or a connection with something divine. We must not listen to those who tell us we are sick and broken beyond repair.

    When someone says there is no cure, we conclude that they do not have the answer for us and move on. We do not listen to those who make us feel scared or small. We seek that which makes us courageous and hopeful.

    As we gain confidence in our self and our inner wisdom, we start to feel safe and empowered. This works wonders for our nervous system, which works wonders for every other system in our body.

    Modern medicine offers life-saving therapy for acute conditions, such as infections, tumors, blood disorders, and illnesses with tissue damage that can be repaired. My beloved mom is alive twenty-three years after battling an advanced case of ovarian cancer, thanks to medicine derived from the Pacific yew tree.

    But allopathy has little success with stress-related symptoms, such as chronic back pain, pelvic pain, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome. Dr. Sarno said that’s because it doesn’t yet recognize them as physical manifestations of emotional stress.

    There is little scientific evidence to show that viruses cause chronic fatigue syndrome. I relied on doctors armed with small-scale studies and their own best guess. Of course, I would have been thrilled if their treatments worked.

    But then, I wouldn’t have discovered the joy of healing, which I now see as a skill for life. It’s a self-written prescription for a more authentic and empowered experience.

    DISCLAIMER: This post represents one person’s experiences and beliefs, and one route to healing. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any condition or disease. Please consult a professional if this doesn’t speak to your personal experience.

  • How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

    How to Get Through Your Darkest Days: Lessons from Addiction and Loss

    “You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.” ~Zadie Smith

    In the last years of my twenties, my life completely fell apart.

    I’d moved to Hollywood to become an actor, but after a few years in Tinsel Town things weren’t panning out the way I hoped. My crippling anxiety kept me from going on auditions, extreme insecurity led to binge eating nearly every night, and an inability to truly be myself translated to a flock of fair-weather friends.

    As the decade wound to a close, I stumbled upon the final deadly ingredient in my toxic lifestyle: opiates. A few small pills prescribed for pain unlocked a part of my brain I didn’t know existed: a calm, confident, and numb version of myself that seemed way more manageable than the over-thinking mind-chatter I was used to.

    At first the pills were like a casual indulgence—I’d pop a few before a nerve-wracking audition or first date, the same way other people might have a few drinks before going out on the town. But my casual relationship to opiates was short-lived: soon the pills were no longer reserved for awkward dates or nerve-wracking auditions, and instead necessary for any type of outing or interaction.

    I knew I’d crossed an invisible line when I began to feel sick without a “dose” of medication. The physical pain they’d been prescribed for had long subsided, but they’d created a need that only grew with more use. Soon I became sick if I didn’t take any pills, which is when I began going to any lengths to get more.

    I wanted so much to stop but felt trapped on a terrible ride: I’d wake hating myself for what I’d done the day before, and with deep shame I’d vow earnestly to quit—then afternoon would come and with it, withdrawal symptoms. As my stomach would turn and my head would spin, I’d lose the resolve to stop and begin searching for my next fix. With that fix would come a few hours of relief, followed by another cycle of self-loathing, a vow to quit, and more failure.

    It was a spin cycle that likely would have killed me had life not intervened in ways that at the time felt devastating; in a span of two weeks my “normal” façade collapsed and, with it, most pillars in my life. Like a house of cards toppling, I lost my job, car, relationship, and was evicted from my home.

    It felt like a cliché country song where the singer loses everything, except in those songs that person is usually likeable and innocent—but in my story, I felt like the villain.

    As I watched my entire life crumble around me, I felt no choice other than to return home and seek the shelter of the only person who had always been there for me—my mom.

    The mom who had raised me with morals like honesty, accountability, and kindness, although I hadn’t been living them for a while. The mom who had struggled raising two kids alone, gotten us off food stamps by going to nursing school, and who watched helplessly as I descended into the same cycle of addiction that had taken the life of my father.

    She told me I could stay if I was sober; I vowed to try, though I’d stopped believing my own promises long before.

    In the recovery program I found soon after, there was an oft repeated saying on every wall: “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” If taken literally, it makes you think about how dark the night sky is before dawn breaks… how heavy, looming, and consuming. Before the light returns, it can feel like the darkness will never end.

    That was how my early days sober felt.

    But as I cobbled together a few weeks and then a few months, I began to feel the faintest bit of trust in myself. Through abstinence and therapy, mindfulness and a sober community, the hopelessness that had seemed so all-consuming began to crack open and let in some light.

    I moved out into my own apartment, returned to school to complete a long-sought college degree, and had a waitressing job that I loved. Then, just after I achieved one year sober, I got a phone call from my brother that would change everything.

    “Melissa, you need to come home,” he said, his voice thick with tears. “It’s mom.”

    My stomach dropped as I gripped the phone, suddenly feeling about five years old. I’d find out later it was a heart attack.

    I felt the darkness descend again.

    —

    In the days that followed her death I felt like a dependent child that was unable to care for myself. I dragged myself through brushing my teeth, dressing, and arranging her funeral; it felt like my heart had stopped along with hers.

    The same thought kept circling the drain of my head—how can I live the rest of my life without my mother?

    I couldn’t imagine not having her at my graduation, wedding, or when I became a parent. Her disappearance from my future brought up a dread much worse than that of the previous year— but as I began to settle into my grief, I realized I had a path through this moment, if I were willing to take it.

    The tools I’d forged in sobriety would prove to be useful in the dark days that followed. I share them below as an offering for anyone who travels through a dark night of the soul: simple steps to keep in mind when you can’t see a path forward.

    Take things one day at a time.

    In sobriety, you learn that imagining your whole life without another drink or drug can be so daunting that you just give up and get loaded. So instead of borrowing future worry, you learn to stay in the week, the day, and the moment.

    I didn’t have to know what having a wedding without my mother would be like—I just needed to eat breakfast. I didn’t need to imagine my graduation—I just needed to get myself through one more class. As I pieced my future together one moment at a time, I found that I could handle the emptiness in bite size pieces. I didn’t have to figure it all out—I just had to keep going.

    Allow feelings to come and trust that they will go.

    Much of what I’d been running from as an addict was the discomfort of my feelings. I didn’t want to feel rejection, so I contorted myself to be liked; I didn’t want to feel sadness, so I busied myself with the next activity. In recovery I learned that we can run from feelings all we want, but eventually they catch up to us in some form. Instead of running I’d learned to allow; instead of busying myself I’d been taught to turn toward pain and trust that it wouldn’t last forever.

    Though this was easier said than done, some part of me knew that running from the grief of my mom’s death would only snowball into a freight train later. I’d scream in my car as I seethed with the unfairness of it all; I’d rock with sobs on my couch when the sadness became too much. It wasn’t pretty and it felt terrible, but when I let the grief shake through me. I found that there would always be an end… that at the bottom of my spiral a thread of mercy would appear, and I would be able to go on.

    Tell the truth.

    From a young age, I felt much more comfortable in a mask of smiles and jokes than sharing how I was actually doing at any given moment. Though getting sober had helped me shed layers of the mask, I still found myself trying to likeable, approved-of, and “good.” But as grief zapped my energy and ability to make myself palatable, when people asked how I was doing I started to be honest.

    Sharing the pain I felt after my mom’s death was like standing naked in the middle of the street—I wasn’t used to crying in front of people and didn’t think they’d like me when they found out I wasn’t always “fun and easy going.” But it was exactly this type of vulnerability that allowed true friends to materialize, old connections to deepen, and the support I longed for to appear.

    Allow yourself to be forever changed.

    In recovery from addiction, I began to think of my sobriety date as a second birthday—the start of an actual new life. Though the way my former life had burned to the ground was painful, I welcomed the chance for a new start.

    But when my mom died, I didn’t realize that losing her would again scatter me into a thousand unrecognizable pieces—pieces I kept trying to fit back together but weren’t ever going to be the same, because I wasn’t.

    Once I allowed my life, relationships, and priorities to be changed by my grief, I found a self that was stronger, more resilient, and somehow more tender. I never would have chosen the form of this lesson, but I came through these experiences a more authentic version of myself… an overarching goal of my life.

    *

    It’s now been seven years since my mom’s death, and I’ve been sober for eight. As my journey continues to unfold, I never lose sight of how broken I once was and how dark things seemed. I also know that the struggles of life aren’t over; they’re part of being human and living a full life.

    But something I now keep in mind is that it’s always darkest before the dawn—I know I don’t have to always see the light…

    I just have to keep going.

  • The Magic of Rewriting Our Most Painful Stories

    The Magic of Rewriting Our Most Painful Stories

    “When you bring peace to your past, you can move forward to your future.” ~Unknown

    It amazes me how things that happen in our childhood can greatly impact our adult lives. I learned the hard way that I was living my life with a deep wound in my heart.

    My father was a very strict man with a temper when I was little, starting when I was around seven years old.

    He had a way of making me feel like all my efforts were not enough. If I scored an 8 in a math exam, he would say, “Why 8 and not 10?” and then punish me. It was a time when some parents thought that beating their children was a way to “put them in place” and teach them a lesson. All this taught me, though, was that I was a disappointment.

    His favorite phrase was “You will never be better than me.”

    As I got older, his temper cooled down a bit, but one thing didn’t change: his painful remarks. “At your age, I was already married, had a house, a car, two daughters, and a piece of land… what have YOU accomplished? See? You will never surpass me.”

    It was his way of “inspiring me” to do better with my life, but it had the opposite effect on me. It was slowly killing my self-esteem.

    When my father passed away, I was seven-year-old Cerise all over again. At the funeral, I asked him, “Daddy, did I finally make you proud? Did I do good with my life?”

    This was the trigger that made me rethink what I was doing with my life. I had to stop for a moment to look at the past. This can be very difficult to do, but sometimes we need to face those painful events in order to understand the nature of our poor decisions and behavior.

    It helped me realize that, unconsciously, I was looking for my father’s approval in the guys I dated. And you know what? It got me nothing but disappointment and heartache, because I was looking for something that they couldn’t give me.

    Inside, I was still that little girl looking for her father’s love.

    When you are a child, you are considered a victim, but when you are a grown up, it is your duty to heal from what was done to you. You just can’t go through life feeling sorry for yourself and complaining about the hand you were dealt. This just keeps you stuck in a sad, joyless life and jeopardizes your relationships.

    In my case, I had to give that little girl the love she so needed in order to stop feeling lonely and stop making the same mistakes.

    The only approval that I needed was my own! When I realized that, I started learning to love myself—regardless of my accomplishments—and I also developed compassion toward my father because I recognized that he was raised the same way he raised me.

    He probably also felt he needed to be the best at everything he did in order to win his parents’ approval. And maybe he thought if I wasn’t the best at everything I did I would never be valued or loved by anyone else.

    Understanding this enabled me to forgive him, break the cycle, and finally let him go.

    So, what makes us slaves to anger, resentment, and abandonment issues? I think it’s the way we keep telling the story in our heads, and this is something that we can transform.

    Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we sweep things under the rug and pretend like nothing happened. We cannot change the past, and certainly we cannot turn a blind eye to it, but we can modify the way we retell the story to ourselves, and this can be a step toward inner healing.

    I decided to give the difficult parts of my childhood experience another meaning. I edited the way I tell myself the story, and this is how it sounds now:

    “My father was a strict man because he wanted me to succeed in life. He taught me to give my best in every task assigned to me; he didn’t make things easier for me because he wanted me to become strong in character and to find a solution in every situation. Daddy constantly challenged me because he wanted me to develop my potential to the fullest so I could face life and its difficulties.

    I’m certain that when my father departed from this world, he did it in peace knowing that he left behind a strong and brave daughter.”

    This is now the story of my childhood, and you know what? I think I like this version better! It’s helped me close the wound I had in my heart. My childhood left a scar, but it’s not hurting anymore.

    My gift to you today is this: Close your eyes and picture a pencil. Do you know why a pencil has an eraser? To remove the things we don’t like, giving us the freedom to rewrite them into something that we feel more comfortable with.

    You can’t change the facts from your past, but you can change how you interpret them, so feel rewrite as much as you need.

    Your wounds will hurt a lot less when you broaden your perspective, try to understand the people who hurt you, and change the meaning of what you’ve been through.

  • The Cages We Live In and What It Means to Be Free

    The Cages We Live In and What It Means to Be Free

    “Cages aren’t made or iron, they’re made of thoughts.” ~Unknown

    I recently read Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, and like many who have read it, I felt as if it had changed my life—but not because it made me think of all the things I was capable of (as was the case with many of friends who read it), but because it made me realize how capable I had already been.

    The book on the whole is beautiful and inspiring, but the part that stuck with me the most was the story about Tabitha, a beautiful cheetah that Glennon and her kids saw at a safari park and a lab named Minnie that had been raised alongside Tabitha, as her best friend, to help tame Tabitha.

    Glennon watched as Minnie sprinted out of her cage and chased a dirt pink bunny that was tied to a jeep.  Shortly after, Tabitha, who had been watching Minnie, ran out of her cage and chased the “dirty pink bunny” just like her best friend had just done.

    Born as a magnificent, wild beast, Tabitha had lost her wild by being caged. She had forgotten her own power, her own strength, her own identity, and had become tamed by watching her best friend. But remnants of Tabitha’s inner wild came back to life when she walked away from the pink bunny toward the perimeter of the fence that was keeping her caged in. The closer she was to the perimeter, the more fierce and regal Tabitha became.

    Glennon insightfully notes in the book that if a wild animal like a “cheetah can be tamed to forget her wild, certainly a woman can too.” And that’s when I wondered, had I also forgotten my own inner wild?  Was I spending my time trapped inside a cage when I could be pacing the perimeter instead?

    I beat myself up over that story for days while desperately trying to think of how I could break free of my metaphorical cage so I could find my way to the seemingly elusive perimeter that others seemed to have easily found and were already pacing.

    I questioned why I hadn’t worked harder, pushed further, and done more to create the life I truly wanted, especially when it became painfully clear that the one I was living didn’t fit that description.  And that’s when it suddenly hit me. Like a ton of bricks falling on me out of nowhere:

    I didn’t need to make my way to the perimeter. I was already there. Truth be told, I had been there for most of my life, and it was so familiar to me that I didn’t even notice it anymore.

    As I sat there in the midst of this comprehension, I looked back on my life and suddenly the steps to the perimeter all seemed to fall in place.

    When I fell in a bucket of boiling water at two years old and put aside my own discomfort to comfort my mother who had broken down at the sight of my burned body, I took a step towards the perimeter.

    When I moved to America at the age of seven and couldn’t understand the language and was instantly labeled as “stupid” but kept going anyway, refusing to let them define who I was, I took another step towards that perimeter.

    When I watched my younger sister die of an incurable illness and kept her light alive inside of me by recognizing the beauty of her life and not just the heartache of her death, I moved closer to the perimeter.

    When I said no to becoming a teacher or a doctor—an unfathomable and disgraceful choice for women of my culture during those times—I took another step toward the perimeter.

    When I refused an arranged marriage, again disgracing my family in the process, the perimeter was directly in my sight.

    By the time I took off for law school (much to my parents’ continuing dismay), the perimeter and I were practically face to face.

    For a while I stayed at the perimeter, quietly stalking my surroundings with the same pride and inner fierceness as the cheetah who inspired these ramblings. But I now realize I was never meant to stay at the perimeter—I was always meant to go beyond it.

    Until I did, I would remain trapped inside my own inner chaos. And the calm I was so desperately seeking would continue to evade me. That inner restlessness that just wouldn’t go away, that indescribable lack of fulfillment and the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach… those were all signs that I was ready to move beyond the perimeter. I was ready to uncage more than just myself—I was ready to uncage my soul.

    That’s why I was repeatedly drawn back to certain people, programs, and even books. I was ready to free myself of all restrictions and for that matter, all perimeters.

    The process hasn’t been easy. And at times, it has been beyond lonely. But it has also been rewarding, deeply healing, and transformative at the same time. And perhaps most importantly of all, it has allowed me to understand that in one way or another, we are all here to break free of the cages that have encased most of us for the majority of our life.

    Some cages are imposed upon us by the thoughts and ideas of those around us, and other times we put ourselves into them, willingly. So we can avoid discomfort, pain, suffering, change, growth, and our own rebirth.

    Sometimes they can even be helpful, but other times they do nothing but hold us back. The steel cages often tell us who to be, where to live, what we “should” do for a living, how to behave, and even who to like or dislike.

    Often, the cages come in different colors, shapes, and sizes. Some are made of gold and filled with expensive toys and bribes to keep us from going outside of them.  Their allure is simply too hard to resist for some people, even though they are often accompanied by gold shackles.

    Others are sparkly and filled with all that glitters. The shine is so intense that their occupants don’t even know they’re in a cage. They’re so fixated with the glitter that they spend their entire lives confined inside and never even realize they’re no freer than the people they’ve been looking down on as being “trapped.”

    And of course, there are some who live in small, dark, and dingy cages that they desperately want to escape but dare not try to because they’re so convinced that it’s safer, easier, and more comfortable to just stay.

    Those are the people that are so afraid of their own power and the taste of true freedom that they probably wouldn’t leave even if the cage door was opened for them.

    And then there are the brave. Those that are truly courageous and have no desire to be confined by any cage or any limits. Those are the people who will do whatever it takes to break the cage so they can set themselves and all of humanity free.

    Those are the people who are roaming beyond the perimeter and have uncaged far more than their physical body—they have uncaged their very soul, and along with it, the many lifetimes of memories, wisdom, and truth it holds inside.

    Those are the people I want to run with. Those are the people I want to call my tribe. Those are the people that, when I meet them, I’ll know I have found my home.

  • The Unexpected Impact of Growing Up with a Difficult Mother

    The Unexpected Impact of Growing Up with a Difficult Mother

    “Difficulties in your life do not come to destroy you, but to help you realise your hidden potential and power, let difficulties know that you too are difficult.” ~Abdul Kalam

    Do you sometimes daydream that your mom is gone, and all your troubles disappear along with her?

    I used to imagine that, too.

    When Mom was in intensive care, swaying between life and death, I sat outside, shell-shocked, trembling all over my body, trying to comprehend the doctor’s words: “Her condition is critical, and only time will show if she will make it. I’m sorry.”

    For a moment, I imagined that Mom was going to die right there, in that old hospital building with rotundas, pylons, and stucco ceilings.

    And the thought of her not returning into my life felt like a relief. It felt terrific: finally, I could relax and live my own life… Then, the moment passed, and the muscles tightened around my chest, suffocating me with the energy of a rested beast.

    My mom was a fighter, and she survived against the odds. We had thirteen more years together, drifting between bad and awful. Then, close to the end, it all changed unexpectedly. It was nothing less than a miracle… or was it?

    Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water

    The thing is, you can run away or go incommunicado, and it might bring you temporary relief. But sooner or later, history will catch up with you unless you stop running and heal yourself.

    Don’t misunderstand me—in extreme cases, the only way to save yourself is to get away from your tormentor. But in the majority of cases of family tension, it’s about a cavalcade of unhappy, struggling women who never felt loved by their mothers and don’t know how to love us as a result. Generations of unhappiness and needless suffering.

    It’s like being a part of the machinery, a gear in a wound-up clock that keeps running till either someone forgets to wind the clock, or one gear gets out of synchronicity and sabotages the entire mechanism.

    You can be that irreverent, rebellious gear and break out of a generational pattern of mistreatment as long as you have the will to heal. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

    What on earth do you mean? 

    Let me explain.

    You Are YOU Because of Your Mom

    I’m guessing your mother never really listens, or if she does, she turns it against you. She is critical, hurtful in her remarks, and she controls your life with a hard hand. And she loves to complain about her life all the time, how hard it is, how lonely and unappreciated she feels, and how tired she is, being left without help.

    These complaints drive you crazy—you have enough worries of your own. You may be still too angry and resentful to find understanding and empathy for your difficult mother. I get it.

    At your core, I know that you are kind and sensitive, a good listener, and an empathetic person. You understand the pain of others because you have been there, too. Even if you do not always know what to say, you know how to be there for another person.

    But you are also a fighter. You have to be because your mom tries to run your life according to her plan, but you won’t let her. This life is yours, you are a separate person, and only you know what’s right for you, so you have to prove to her and yourself that you can be happy on your own.

    You fight for your dreams and make them come true, one by one. You don’t wait for a fairy to come and give you everything you need to be happy served on a plate. Instead, you try to change your life for the better, bit by bit.

    You are strong and resilient, more than you give yourself credit for.

    You see, the “side effect” of being criticized and chastened, of having another’s will imposed on you, is your ability to think for yourself. You see that your mother’s behavior is irrational and confusing, and you question her judgment and decisions. You can sense people who potentially can hurt you, and you avoid getting involved with them when you listen to your inner voice.

    Always remember that that resilient and robust part of you is in there, and you can connect with it at any time. It may feel like being angry for a good reason—that anger gives you the energy to stand up for yourself. Use it to protect yourself and grow.

    You may not see it right now, but your trials are gifts to help you become a better person. Just zoom out, and you will see it—the bigger picture of your existence.

    As the Steel Was Tempered

    Each experience we live through is valuable because it teaches us a lesson we need to learn.

    Your mother was responsible for you when you were a kid. Well, you’re not a kid anymore. How you feel about yourself is your responsibility now. Take it, and you will be able to change your life.

    And what has to be done?

    Healing.

    It takes time, but that doesn’t mean you should be on a treadmill working hard all the time. You should live and enjoy your life here and now; doing so will help speed up the healing itself.

    Thinking back, the most important milestones of my healing were:

    #1 Undergoing therapy.

    Before therapy, I didn’t remember much of my childhood, and those memories that I still had were the memories I would rather forget. But the truth is, I didn’t want to remember any good stuff because it wouldn’t support the image of a terrible mother I had back then. My pain and fear so absorbed me that I couldn’t see any good in Mom at all.

    Therapy helped me to clear the anger from my heart, and doing so unfroze the good memories of my childhood: Mom reading goodnight stories for me every night; Mom making pretty dresses for me or buying me an outfit she hardly could afford; Mom spending her vacation at home so that I could take a friend to the Black Sea.

    In time, I realized that pure good and evil don’t exist—we are all mixed up, cocktails of light and darkness. Owning our shadows helps us get off a high horse of righteousness and stop pointing the finger at others. We are all humans, and that means being faulty.

    #2 Studying trauma.

    Educating myself about childhood abuse and other trauma-related topics helped me understand the cause of the problem. It also showed me that I wasn’t crazy, and none of it was my fault. That healing was possible and necessary if I wanted to live a happy life of my own. But probably the biggest takeaway was learning that I wasn’t alone in this situation.

    #3 Getting curious about my family’s history.

    Exploring my mom’s background and understanding her wounds helped me forgive her later and move on with my life.

    #4 Building boundaries and keeping my distance.

    Distancing myself emotionally from Mom helped me rebuild myself as an independent person and not an extension of her, and set up healthy boundaries.

    #5 Becoming a better daughter.

    Learning better communication skills allowed me to connect with Mom at another level, minimizing new hurt. Better communication means choosing your fights and avoiding some of the unnecessary ones.

    For example, if your mother complains about being lonely, you can validate her experience—just like that! After all, she may live alone, and if she feels lonely despite all your help, she has the right to her feelings. So by saying, “I understand, Mom, it must be tough for you,” you can prevent an attack and help her hold on to her feelings.

    P.S. You have to sound empathetic and authentic to get the response you want.

    #6 Continuing with the effort.

    Keeping up your efforts to keep contact alive to the very end, always trying to reach her, can pay off later when you least expect a change.

    Not at all costs, however. Use your judgment. In cases where there is a very malignant relationship, it’s up to you to keep your distance or avoid contact altogether.

    #7 Cultivating positive relationships.

    Making friends with emotionally healthy people can allow you to enjoy sane, healthy relationships and learn better ways of interacting.

    Is it easy? Not in the beginning, but you can learn. It can be scary, I know, but it will be rewarding, too. So, give it a chance.

    Do the Work Only You Can Do

    Losing my mom back in 2005 would probably have made my life easier in some ways, but would it have contributed to my healing and growth? Maybe not.

    And I would’ve missed the opportunity to meet a different Mom that last year of her life—that one who beamed with a smile of delight on her face when she saw me, bottomless love and appreciation in her eyes. Our mutual forgiveness and hugs—she had never hugged me before!

    All the pain and anger toward my mom are gone, and I finally feel at peace. Believe it or not, I miss her. I have pictures of her and Dad that I took from her apartment after she died; they are now in my office. I say “Good morning” to them every day when I step in.

    There’s work that only you can do. Do it not just for you, but for the next generations of your family, and also for the world, which needs kindness and acceptance more than ever. Stop trying to change your mother and use the energy to build yourself up.

    Be angry, sad, and hurt—feel it all. Then, let go and move on. If anyone can do it, it’s you, because thanks to your difficult mother, you are strong, resilient, and have a strong will to change your life for the better.

    Do it!

  • Beating the Odds: Why I Survived and My Brother Did Not

    Beating the Odds: Why I Survived and My Brother Did Not

    My brother, Marc-Emile, sparkled brilliantly. At sixteen years old, he could expound on physics or Plato, calculus, or car mechanics, Stravinsky or Steppenwolf. At seventeen, he began reading the Great Books series, starting with Homer and Aeschylus and moving forward through the Greeks. I don’t know how many of those Great Books he read. He didn’t have that long.

    My brother had everything going for him. He was kind, ethical, and handsome. He graduated high school a year early, at the top of his class, with virtually perfect SATs. He started at MIT as a physics major. He ended at MIT too, one year later. At the age of nineteen, he flung himself to his death from the tallest campus building.

    Then there was me, Marc’s little sister. Everyone knew me too, but not because I was brilliant. I was exceptional in a less appealing way, having been severely burned in a fire when I was four years old. I barely survived this injury, which left me with no lower lip, no chin, no neck and my upper arms fused to my torso. Bright purple raised scars traveled the length of my small body.

    I spent month after month in the hospital alone, undergoing one terrifying reconstructive surgery after the next. When I was home, I was bullied and taunted, kids running past me, screaming “Yuck!” as they fled, laughing. The children’s hospital ward was my playground. Wheelchair races were my soccer. I couldn’t take ballet because I couldn’t lift my arms above my head.

    So why is it that I am now living a contented, fulfilling life, happily married and surrounded by friends? And why is it that my exceptional, gifted brother took his own life forty years ago? No one would have bet on this outcome.

    Perhaps a clue lay in our baby photos. As toddlers, each of us had been brought to a professional photographer’s studio. In his photos, my brother sits cooperatively on a wooden stool, holding a ball with stars on it. He looks at the camera with pensive eyes, half-smiling. In another photo, he gamely holds a toy train. Again, he peers into the camera, observing and reticent.

    The page turns in the photo album and there I am. I laugh, mouth stretched as wide as possible. I point, tiny eyebrows comically raised. I hold my head coquettishly. I am probably nine months old and clearly having the time of my life. I don’t even need a toy. I’m a party all by myself.

    My basic temperament was different from Marc’s. I was friendly; he was introverted. I was optimistic; he tended toward depression. I was gleeful; he was sad. From the start, we displayed these differences, differences, which turn out to be vital factors in our survival.

    I have spent my lifetime trying to figure out why I am still here when my brother is not. It feels wrong, even four decades later. I feel his absence as an ache in my chest, a slight stabbing on the left side, like a slender silver knife slipping into my heart. His absence has been present within me, every day of my life.

    A day I have grown to loather is National Siblings Day, a reoccurring nightmare of a day, which happens every April 10. My friends post loving photos of themselves, arms around their brother or sister. Sometimes they share old photos taken decades ago and pose cleverly in new photos to recreate the original picture. They stand, embracing each other in an identical pose, but now with gray hair and glasses. They smile, grinning at the years that have passed, sharing the joke together.

    I don’t know how National Siblings Day started, or whose bright idea it was. I never used to have to endure this day. My only comfort, and this is cold comfort indeed, is the comradery of my friend’s daughter, who lost her only sibling four years ago. Every year, for the past four years, I have texted dear Laura on April 10th.

    “Happy F-g National Siblings Day. I love you.”

    Within seconds, Laura responds. “I know. It’s awful. I love you too.”

    I am here, Marc is not. I am resilient, despite the odds against me. He was not resilient, despite the odds in his favor. It turns out that being naturally cheerful might be more important than acing the SATs.

    Perhaps in this year of COVID-19 and other assorted disasters, the capacity to be cheerful is the most crucial gift of all.

    I am upbeat and optimistic, despite being burned, abandoned, neglected, bullied, and despite losing my favorite person in the world. I don’t necessarily mean to be cheerful; it just happens. I’m like the red and white plastic bobber on the end of a fishing line. I go under and then just pop back up again, for no real reason other than that’s just what I do. It’s my temperament; I don’t choose it.

    Marc didn’t choose his temperament either; none of us do. Our genes are what they are. But luckily, genetics are not the only factor in resilience. Life experience matters too, and so does social support.

    Optimism can be encouraged. Gratitude can be worked on. We can teach people the skills to cope, in our homes, our schools, or our psychotherapy offices.

    We can impart the importance of physical, mental, and emotional self-care so they develop a strong foundation of well-being. We can give them tools to handle life’s challenges—like reframing struggles as opportunities, focusing on things they can control, finding strength in all they’ve overcome, and letting other people in. And we can teach them to recognize stress before it escalates so they can calm and soothe themselves.

    Resilience is like intelligence: some people are born naturally smarter, but everyone can learn. Some people are born more resilient, but everyone can be helped.

    We need to keep our collective eyes out for those who are sad, who seem hopeless, who don’t smile for the camera. We really need to keep our eyes peeled now, during this time of quarantine and social isolation, because emotional distress is on the rise.

    Science tells us resilience can be improved. However, offering help will be more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive than simply exhorting, “Be more resilient!” Demanding resilience does not make it happen. Some people need to be taught how.

    Let’s not pretend we all begin at the same starting line. And, speaking from a lifetime of missing my brother… let’s not leave anyone behind.

  • The Art of Self-Soothing: How to Make Resilience More Sustainable

    The Art of Self-Soothing: How to Make Resilience More Sustainable

    “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” ~Micheal Jordan 

    I believe that self-soothing is the key to accessing all happiness and success. All things being equal, when someone is able to self-soothe, they are more resourceful and more powerful than those who haven’t learned that skill yet. Here’s why.  

    Great success (whether professional or personal) comes with a great deal of responsibility. That responsibility can potentially lead to stress and is often accompanied by failures along the way. Most of us are familiar with that famous Michael Jordan quote—it was even in a ’90s commercial.

    Resilience is a great skill. In fact, that path is clearly recognizable to anyone who has achieved a lot. But it’s perspective that shows you that those failures aren’t “this is the end of everything and we’re all going to die” failures. Instead, they’re just medium or even small-sized stumbling blocks. 

    When you’re not yet at the end of your career or life, how do you know? Well, you don’t. So how can you function when things don’t go your way? How do you stay calm and grounded when something unexpected and shocking happens?

    The more “monodimensional” action-oriented side of resilience is to “power through” the hard times, sharpening your blade with your teeth. And while this might work sometimes, it takes a toll on your emotional well-being—can you feel that cortisol going through the roof?

    It’s easy to miss that monodimensional, action-based resilience is actually very weak, and ultimately unsustainable, if it’s not supported by a strong and playful mind. And I believe that Jordan had such a mind and demonstrated it throughout his career. 

    It’s not just persisting despite failures; it’s also how you feel every day, about your failures and in general. It’s about not allowing all the negative experiences to poison your daily well-being. 

    So how do you make resilience more sustainable? There is a softer way to deal with stumbling blocks, one that hopefully doesn’t lead to too much stress or burnout. One that, when mastered, will keep the emotional well-being floodgates open.

    One that you will want to teach to your friends, your kids, your parents, and your enemies too. This second dimension of resilience is self-soothing.

    I was raised in the household of Ms. and Mr. Stress. Growing up, I watched them take deep dives into (probably unnecessary) pools of stress. There was always something that wasn’t okay, something that needed to be fixed, not enough money or not enough time.

    Here’s a classic scene from my youth: When a piece of equipment, like the washing machine, would break, our whole family had to be part of the sorrow, anger, and anxiety associated with such an unfortunate event. But it wouldn’t be fixed right away (because it might… heal by itself, no?) When it would be absolutely clear that there was no hope for the poor washer, the focus would switch to panicking about the money needed to replace it.

    Once the washing machine was replaced, the problem became that perhaps it won’t be as good as the previous one, or it might take up more space, or it’s louder. It was never possible to relax, for fear that everything wasn’t perfect. It was obligatory to look for potential problems, scanning every single detail with “Terminator vision.”

    When we could finally be certain that everything was okay, we could then move onto the next thing that needed to be fixed.

    I was exposed to chronic stress for most of my childhood and teenage years. I didn’t enjoy the environment, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t have words for it, and I didn’t have the concepts to understand it. I didn’t know that I could live differently. Or better yet, I knew other parents were more relaxed, but I just thought they were luckier individuals. 

    When I moved out, aged twenty-two, I left the country and moved to Holland, to a tiny student city whose pretty canals were filled with swans and ducks, and where most family houses had cute and well-groomed front yards. I watched kids on tiny bikes ride with their parents to school, and people of all ages sit for coffee in wooden decorated cafes. It was nothing like the stress-filled metropolis I was used to, and people seemed to me to be so calm. 

    I loved it instantly, and I felt the well-being flood me, but I didn’t know why. Over the course of the following years, I lived in other places too. For some segments of my life, I even went back to my childhood home.

    It wasn’t until ten years after I first moved out that I was able to finally learn the names and the concepts that defined the emotional dichotomy I kept experiencing when I would go back and forth.

    The understanding came in two steps. During my masters, when studying the brain, I learned how the pre-frontal cortex works as a simulator of experiences. We all, as humans, are capable of imagining in great detail something that hasn’t yet happened and make it just as real as something that happened the day before.

    From psychologist Dan Gilbert, I learned that the brain is also capable of synthesizing happiness (or the cocktail of chemicals that we interpret as happiness). And a functioning brain will return you to a state of happiness withinmonths or within a year even after very traumatic events.

    In a fascinating TED talk (The Surprising Science of Happiness), Gilbert presents data from two groups of people: people who won the lottery and people who lost the use of their legs. One year after the event, the level of happiness of the two groups is identical.

    Very often, we hear people (or even our own selves) say how, with hindsight, some terrible event has revealed itself to be a kind of bliss. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what the cause of happiness was; if it feels like happiness, it is happiness.

    The brain is capable of synthesizing happiness (or sadness, or stress, or panic, or even anger, for that matter) independently of the external conditions. This is not surprising. If you think about it, what we attempt to achieve through meditation is nothing but a firmer hold on the steadiness of the brain, which will then lead us (or keep us) in homeostasis, a state of physical balance. This is why meditation feels good, and also why it can be so hard to start meditating when your mind is all over the place if you don’t let yourself ease into it.

    Once I grasped these concepts, I made my first leap into understanding emotional well-being. I saw people like my parents constantly training their minds to see faults and problems, rehearsing negative feelings, and therefore leaving completely to chance their effectiveness at reacting to more significant issues.

    The second leap happened a few years later. I was done with my studies and was anxiously juggling the various areas of my life. 

    Over the course of less than a year, I lost my job in academia. I didn’t manage to get a new one (failure one). I got kicked out of a house where I loved to live (failure two) by a person whom I considered a friend (failure three). The man I had a relationship with left to be someone else (failure four), and I injured myself in such a way that was unable to use my right arm for months (failure five). Forget typing—how was I going to apply to new jobs?

    As soon as I could, I packed my stuff, moved back with my parents to be taken care of, and got the final part of the treatment for my arm.

    This setback happened when I was thirty-three to thirty-four. After the first months feeling loss and mourning for my previous life, I realized I wasn’t making it easy for myself. I was lingering in anger, obsessing over every small thing that wasn’t just right, and being devastated by all the big ones that weren’t right at all.

    Then it clicked. My situation was no different than worrying about broken domestic appliances, stressing over taxes, feeling insulted by bad books or movies, getting annoyed by politicians and by lost socks. 

    I had to make it easier for myself. I had to find the irony in everything and spend more time thinking about what was working. 

    I wanted to “detox” from the victim mentality. I started looking at my life as the blankest of slates. And felt exhilarated.

    In fact, my life was even better than a blank slate. I had all my skills, my knowledge, and my health. I had no ties, no debt, no contracts, and no furniture stored somewhere. Ultimately, I had a very supportive family and a place to stay temporarily in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

    Today, this list of positives is easy to make and I could go on. Now it’s easy for me to see how previously I had made myself more miserable, focusing on all that was going wrong. But I can still vividly remember how overwhelming it all felt and how it seemed impossible to stop that snowball from rolling down and becoming more bitter.

    From my new place of clarity, balance, and bliss, I decided I’d devise tricks to prevent myself from ever tumbling down into deep negativity again. If I took care of how I felt every day and developed practical techniques to deflect my attention from the small daily problems, maybe I’d develop enough of a muscle that I could use if and when big problems occurred.

    So I took a “masterclass in myself.” I learned what it is that makes me laugh, what grabs my attention, what relaxes me. Knowing these things will help anyone to stop that negative snowball before it hijacks your thoughts completely. 

    I have a great passion for comedy, and I figured out that, regardless of my mental state, listening to my favorite comedian will reset my mood 100% of the time. I know that nature documentaries (especially those about Space) will hypnotize me and make me slightly detached from my body, so when I’m sick or in pain, these are my go-to’s. I know that when I feel flustered or my mind feels scattered, walking and listening to certain music will bring me closer to calm.

    Coming up with a list of ready-to-use resources like these ones, but tailored for you, is one of the greatest resources a person can have. And the more these resources are on autopilot, the easier juggling your life will become. For me, today, listening to comedy when I’m annoyed is as natural as drinking water if I’m thirsty. And every day, I’m still adding new practices to my arsenal.

    There are two caveats to all this: Be aware of the cause of what makes you feel bad and watch out for escapism.

    If you’re chronically depressed, I would never recommend watching comedy from morning until bed. If you have recurring anger issues, I wouldn’t recommend pumping them away at the gym. You need to seek professional help. Similarly, finding things that cheer you up is great, yet spending your whole day seeking ways to entertain yourself might not be the most constructive way to go about your life.

    Self-regulation is one of those responsibilities that adults have, and it’s a great one to embrace. A rule of thumb is: If you’re still enjoying whatever it is you are self-soothing with, then great. If you’re neutral about it, it’s time to move on. And if you realize you’re not enjoying other things that you could have been enjoying, then your self-soothing has gotten out of hand. Don’t beat yourself up though; next time you’ll do better.

    Generally, though, all it takes is to distract yourself sufficiently from the negative thought/memory of the event. Some other time you might want to consolidate some positivity to that memory. There are many ways (from NLP techniques to meditation techniques to hypnosis, and more), but for simple daily life, what I found works well for me is this three-step process:

     1) Allowing some time for my immediate reaction to express itself. I don’t want to suppress anything, but I don’t want that state of reaction to be the place where I now reside.

     2) I’ll go ahead with my self-soothing technique of choice and try to reduce the amount of time that my mind broadcasts thoughts about the problem.

     3) After a little time has passed, I’ll pick up the topic and briefly discuss it with a trusted friend. Someone who doesn’t have any stake in it, who won’t be triggered by it, and who can provide both constructive and positive comments.

    If you master a basic self-soothing practice, you’ll notice an immediate improvement in how you can handle the small daily hiccups. And with a little time (really not much time at all), you’ll be able to handle bigger and more complex problems with a lot less effort. 

    What’s wonderful about this skill is that it will continue to grow with you. As you add more pieces from your personal growth journey, they’ll strengthen this new skill as well.

    A strong self-soothing practice will enable you to help and be compassionate with the people around you. It will also trickle down to your kids, providing them with one of the greatest resources they can receive from you.

  • How to Avoid Emotional Burnout This Holiday Season

    How to Avoid Emotional Burnout This Holiday Season

    Whether you celebrate or not, the holiday season can be stressful for many reasons. From experiencing difficult emotions like grief, anger, or resentment that seem to resurface out or nowhere, to the pressures of making everything perfect for everyone, there’s a lot of opportunity for emotional burnout.

    I’m no stranger to painful emotions re-emerging around this time of the year. Christmas used to trigger in me the feelings of loneliness and guilt for years, following my move across the country and away from my family and friends.

    Moving was a conscious choice my husband and I made soon after we married. We were no strangers to uprooting our lives—we left behind most of our families, friends, and even parts of ourselves moving to America a decade earlier. But it’s one thing to do that when you’re single, and another when you’re growing as a new family and don’t have your parents and siblings supporting you through the thick and thin of building a life.

    One of the unintended consequences we had not considered was not being with our families around the holidays, birthdays, and other important moments in our lives. Once we had children, it was often impossible to travel home, and as much as we tried to make the best of it, holidays had an underpinning of sadness, isolation, and depression.

    The most painful for me was that our children had no grandparents, aunts, or cousins around throughout most of the year—and this pain was magnified around the holidays.

    In the early years especially, I felt an enormous amount of guilt for taking that feeling of community and familial support away from my children. The sadness was often crippling. I tried to put on a happy face for my babies, but inside I was often lonely and depressed.

    I also had to face the mounting sense of abandonment I felt every time my family couldn’t or wouldn’t spend the holidays with us. For many years I felt unsupported, unimportant, and unloved. This only brought my childhood experiences of feeling neglected and unseen to the surface. Eventually, I realized I had to heal my past in order to shift how I experience the present.

    Over the years I learned to step back from my pain and look at it differently. My perspective slowly shifted as I learned to set healthier boundaries, have more realistic goals and expectations, resolve my past traumas, reach out for support, and take care of my own needs. Mindfulness and the willingness to do the work is what made it all possible.

    1. Practice mindfulness.

    When things get hard, we must try to accept and allow what is happening in the moment—this is the core of mindfulness. Blinders off, we can learn to observe what is happening and ride the wave of our feelings around that.

    This is difficult work, so we tend to avoid it. We run in the other direction. We bury ourselves in work, get a drink to take the edge off, or turn our TV on to distract ourselves. We pretend we’re fine and we push through, thinking we’ve outsmarted our feelings. But the pain is still there, lingering, festering, ready to explode in the least opportune moment.

    It’s important to practice mindfulness during less tumultuous times and learn to observe our thoughts and feelings when things are relatively easy. Then, once we build our mindfulness muscle, we can practice bringing it into more difficult moments to ride them out.

    Don’t be afraid to feel your feelings—the more you resist the stronger they get. If you’re tend to get overwhelmed easily, plan ahead. Schedule time to feel bad, to rage, to cry, to talk to someone, to journal. Do it in a safe space and preferably with the support of a friend or a professional.

    The goal is to feel whatever feelings you’re holding onto and release that pressure in a mindful way, so it doesn’t come out inappropriately (or misdirected) around the holiday table.

    2. Validate your feelings.

    Allowing, accepting, and validating your feelings is vital to emotional well-being. Whether it’s guilt, anger, or grief you are feeling, they have their place and are all valid. Neither good nor bad, our feelings are messengers—they inform us as we go about our lives. And we need to listen in.

    Growing up in an invalidating environment, this was my weakest link. My feelings were never accepted, and I was often threatened to stop displaying them or I’d get in trouble. It was incredibly invalidating to have no one say, “I understand.” Instead, my displays of emotions were met with disdain, anger, and punishment. I learned to bury my feelings and disconnected from my emotional self.

    As an adult, I kept looking to other to validate me. This was frustrating, and often left me feeling rejected, lonely, and insecure. Eventually, I learned to listen to my feelings and acknowledge that it was okay to feel the way I felt, that I had a right to feel this way, and that it made perfect sense I felt the way I did given what happened. I learned to allow my feelings to just be.

    Let yourself feel and listen to what the feeling is trying to tell you. Maybe you need to apologize and repair a lost connection (guilt). Maybe it’s time to draw new boundaries to restore balance or protect your mental or physical well-being (anger). Maybe you need to accept that an important relationship failed and move on (grief).

    Our feelings are there to guide us, to help us make the most informed decisions. The better we listen the faster we learn and recover.

    3. Practice self-compassion and body-mind self-care.

    We tend to revert back to our pre-programmed patterns and behaviors around our nuclear family, replaying our childhood roles and falling into habits we thought we shed long time ago. Don’t beat yourself up when this happens—it’s natural and your awareness of it is the first step to changing it. And we can start by putting ourselves first, practicing self-compassion, and taking care of our needs.

    My programming was that of the perfect daughter/wife/mother who would bend over backwards to take care of everyone’s needs, to my own detriment. I neglected my own needs, both physically and emotionally. I planned elaborate menus, invited friends out of obligation, and tried to be everything for everyone: cheerful, helpful, supportive, forever patient and giving, saying “yes” to everyone but myself. It was physically and emotionally draining.

    Through reflection, and a lot of journaling, I realized I was on a path of self-destruction. My overfunctioning was harming me both physically and emotionally, and I had to do something different. The one thing that made a huge difference was learning to put myself first and set healthy boundaries in my relationships with others.

    It’s beautiful to have a giving personality and want to be there for others, but when we do that to our own detriment everyone suffers. Neglecting yourself is not a virtue. Everyone is responsible for their own feelings and needs—you can’t do this work for others. Your job is to take care of yourself, body, mind and heart. When you fill your own tank, you then can be there for others, but not before.

    Don’t neglect yourself. Take a long, soothing bath or shower, walk your dog, eat protein-rich breakfast, spend time in solitude, bake your favorite cookies, reconnect with yourself though journaling and meditation, practice gratitude, learn to say “no,” reach out for support, take a nap. Pay attention to what you need and respond with love and nurturance.

    And when you stumble, love yourself. When you make mistakes, talk too much, get sucked into family drama, lose your way—this is when it’s really important to love yourself anyway. Love your shadows and your imperfections remembering they once helped you survive. In time, you will transform them into strength, change, and growth.

    4. Tap into your resilience.

    You will be challenged around the holidays, that’s a given. Trust that you are strong enough to ride the waves of emotions mindfully. This shift in perspective will empower you to make better choices when faced with difficulty.

    Before I built my resilience toolbox, I would get emotionally reactive to something as simple as mean comments, bickering children, or people being late, simply because I was under a lot of stress (a lot of it self-imposed).

    With mindfulness, I learned to take a pause between trigger and my reaction. I watched as my body tensed, my heart started racing, and negative thoughts came rushing in. And I breathed through it, watching it change, and eventually pass. If it didn’t pass, I’d take some action to take me out of the situation and reset, like go for a walk. Or I’d ask myself, “What do I need right now?” and gave that to myself. Then, I could come back and respond, typically from a much calmer and supportive place.

    Chose to be kind to yourself when you’re struggling. Learn few coping strategies you can employ in time of need: embrace yourself when you feel like falling apart, take five extra deep breaths to reset your nervous system, step outside to catch some fresh air, put headphones on and play your favorite resilience song really loud (mine is “Unstoppable” by Sia).

    There are many things you can do to soothe your nervous system and strengthen your resilience muscle, practices that will help you explore, sort out, and process your emotions. Yoga, journaling, long walks, sitting in silence for five minutes every day, or dancing are all beneficial.

    The point is to pay attention to your inner world, recognize when you’re struggling, and give yourself what you need to recover.

    5. Avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms.

    Temptations are always around—food, alcohol, binge-watching Netflix, scrolling social media, holiday shopping, etc. These are perfectly fine in moderation and often handy as a short-term break from the heaviness.

    But we must be mindful of when we try to distract and numb ourselves in order to escape, because that only prolongs our suffering and delays the healing process. When we numb, we avoid vulnerability—the core of meaningful human experience—and we never resolve and move past our issues. Engage in your life consciously, be open, and accept what is. No more escaping. Trust that you are strong enough to walk through the pain and come out the other side.

    —

    I used to feel like I had to survive the holidays somehow. I was perfecting and overfunctioning to counter the internal feelings of lacking, guilt and abandonment.

    It was most difficult when I was a new mom, didn’t have adequate support, and had unresolved feelings from childhood that were being triggered without my conscious awareness. These days, holidays are a mixture of joy and sadness, cherishing, and letting go, and I don’t get so easily overwhelmed by it all.

    I now focus on growth and health, on building my own family traditions, cherishing sweet memories, and enjoying the moment. I no longer wallow in self-pity and feeling like a victim of circumstances, and I no longer let negative thoughts and feelings take over my head and my heart. I stay mindful, and when I stumble, I remind myself that even though I’m imperfect, I am enough.

  • 8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die

    8 Things I Learned from Watching My Mum Die

    “Pain changes your life forever. But so does healing from it.” ~Kayil York

    In 2012 my mum got diagnosed with cancer. After an operation, she was cancer-free for some time when in March 2017 it was discovered that the cancer had returned and had spread everywhere, notably to her lungs.

    She was adamant that she did not want further treatment, which would have been palliative at best anyway and would have had significant side effects. Nobody was able to make a prognosis regarding how much longer she had left. Being seventy, there was a chance that it would develop slowly.

    Nothing much seemed to happen for a little while when suddenly from one day to the next, she couldn’t use her legs anymore, and a few weeks later in July 2017, she was able to move into a hospice, having her last wish fulfilled. After a further four weeks, she passed away.

    Those four weeks were a rollercoaster. Her condition changed up and down. But mostly I could not get my head around how she could die. I simply couldn’t imagine how her body could go from functioning to shutting down.

    I lived about 500km away and went up to see her for long weekends during that time. I experienced the hospice as a very peaceful place. Nevertheless, I often sat by her bed, holding her hand and feeling utterly overwhelmed and helpless and scared.

    I was convinced that I should be doing something, saying something, but could not think of anything at all that might ease her final passage. The relationship with my mum had always been difficult, thus this also felt like the last chance to make my peace with her, with us.

    Seeing her in pain was horrific. She quickly advanced to a stage where she was no longer able to ring for the nurses. Wrinkling her forehead became the indicator for her pain. It was terrible to know that this was probably happening when nobody else was in the room and who knows how long it could take for anyone to notice.

    Once the nurse came to administer more painkillers, it took another ten to fifteen minutes until you could see them work and my mum’s face slowly relaxing. The ten longest minutes.

    After three weeks, swallowing became an issue. Even just taking a sip of water became a massive struggle and ended in coughing fits. The doctors said there was nothing they could do to make it easier. With all the medical advances, it seemed crazy that she had to endure any pain at all.

    Her last four weeks were the toughest in my life so far and the first time I experienced the death of somebody close, and from such close quarters. At the same time it also turned out to be the most rewarding time.

    One of the things that struck me was that almost everyone has or will experience the death of a loved one. It had such a monumental impact on me, and I can only assume that it does for a lot of people, too, and so I would like to share my story.

    Here are some of the lessons I learned, which arose from a very specific situation but which I feel are equally applicable to other challenging situations in life.

    1. You are alone.

    Dying is personal. Watching somebody die is personal. Your whole life is personal.

    There is simply no manual or set of guidelines to refer to. Not to how we live, not to how we die, and not to how we grieve.

    Sometimes we might confuse our personal life lessons with universal laws. A number of people were giving me advice (I didn’t ask for). Advice about having to be there for her final breath (in the end my mum decided to slip away with no one else in the room). Advice about the importance of the funeral or on the appropriate length and ways of grieving.

    Some of the forcefulness behind the messages were overwhelming at the time and had me doubting my own feelings and decisions. While I fully appreciate they meant well, I had to remind myself that only I can decide for myself what to do and how to do it. There is no right or wrong. What feels right to someone, might feel very wrong to you.

    Listen to your inner voice! Tune in, and your heart will tell you what to do. We all have an inner compass; it’s just a matter of learning to access and trust it. Equally, when the tables are turned, be conscious of how you talk to people. Offer support and share your experiences by all means but give room for the other person to go their own way.

    2. You are not alone.

    In other ways I was not alone. One of the most important lessons for me was to accept help. Yes, bloody ask for help! I tend to be a control-freak, proud of my independence, always having been able to deal with things by myself. Suddenly I felt frighteningly helpless. I felt like everyone else had it figured out and I was failing miserably.

    Everyone in the hospice was amazing, whether it was talking to me, listening to me, letting me cry, offering me a cup of tea, providing me with food, or holding my hand. It meant the world and I stopped regarding accepting help as a weakness. There is no merit in going it alone, whatever it may be. You want to help those you love—allow them to be there for you, too.

    3. The power of a good cry.

    In line with my wish to be independent, I hate crying in front of people. I worried it would upset my mum. I worried I made other people uncomfortable. I worried the tears would never stop.

    Then somebody told me that it’s physiologically impossible to cry continuously. I can’t remember the time, but it’s something like twenty minutes after which the crying will automatically cease. That thought comforted me: The worst that could happen would be to cry for twenty minutes. That seemed manageable. Besides, there didn’t seem to be much I could do to stop the tears from coming anyway.

    Once I relaxed about crying, I discovered how transformative tears could be. They offered and still offer a release of tension that would otherwise keep building up inside. They have a message that is worth listening to. They are part of life. Don’t feel ashamed. Don’t worry on other people’s behalf, because it’s not for you to figure out how they deal with your tears.

    4. Feel it all.

    I used to strive for a life made up of only happy moments. People would tell me that without the crap, we wouldn’t appreciate the good. But I’ll be honest: I was not convinced.

    When feeling ‘negative’ emotions, in addition to feeling them, I was annoyed that I felt them, adding another layer of frustration. I engaged in an internal fight against those emotions, and as you may guess this only made things worse.

    Here I was dealing with feelings that were new to me, also in an intensity that was new to me and which felt uncomfortable as hell. I quickly worked out though that I couldn’t push them away. I couldn’t distract myself. Eventually I came to accept them as part of me and part of the experience. And the thing is that everything passes—the “good” as well as the “bad.”

    Don’t judge your feelings. Allow them to flow through you. Fighting them will only make them linger longer. Feel them and seek to learn from them. Everything we feel can teach us a lesson.

    5. Some things you cannot prepare for.

    Since my mum’s initial diagnosis, I had been mentally preparing for her death. Or so I thought. Grief took on many different forms for me. I hadn’t expected any of them and had nevertheless been going through various scenarios beforehand. It turned out to have been a waste of time to even attempt preparing for any of it. And this applies to most things in life.

    It will be whatever it will be. But most importantly you will be okay!

    It sucks at times. It still comes over me at random times. The realization that she is no longer around hits me again and again, as if it’s news. I often dream of her. Things happen, and I want to tell her about it and then realize that I can’t talk to her ever again. I have no idea where else my grief will take me so I have given up spending time of trying to anticipate it but I have faith that I will manage.

    6. Carpe diem.

    We know we will die one day, yet we still generally live our lives as if we will be around forever.

    Okay, I’m not saying that I’ve seized every minute of every day since my mum passed away. I forget. But I also remember. I remember that life is short. Death puts things into perspective in many ways. Is it worth getting upset or stressed over certain things? Do I really want to hold a grudge? Is this really worth my time? Is this who I want to spend my time with? How will I feel looking back on my life when my time comes?

    I ask myself these questions more often nowadays, and it has changed my life for the better. I am overall more relaxed and I stress less. I am more precious over how I spend my time and who with. I am less willing to put up with things that don’t feel good to me (this is where your inner voice plays a crucial role, too). It is liberating to say the least.

    7. Gratitude rocks.

    Almost a decade ago, I started a daily gratitude diary. I found it tough in the beginning. After a crappy day, I just didn’t think anything good had happened. But practice changed my mindset with lasting effects.

    It’s not about forcing yourself to be happy all the time; it’s about changing your perspective and focusing on the “good” without denying the “bad.” It helps me not to take things for granted in everyday life.

    Even during my mum’s last weeks, I found many things on a daily basis that I felt grateful for: I was grateful that even on her deathbed we were able to share a laugh. I was grateful to witness through her friends and family how she had touched other people’s lives. I was grateful how it brought me back closer to some people. I was also grateful for little things like sitting on her balcony in the sun or listening to music together.

    Above all I was and am grateful for having been given the opportunity to witness her dying. Especially given our difficult relationship, I am grateful I was able to say goodbye – I am aware not everyone gets the chance.

    8. Resilience is a superpower.

    If I got through this, I will get through other stuff, too. Death is outside your control. You have no choice but to deal with it when it comes your way. You do have a choice how to deal with it though.

    You can find the lesson in whatever life serves you. You can combine all of the above and be safe in the knowledge that you will be okay. I feel more resilient and I am confident that it will help me master other situations in the future. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be pain. But you are able to handle it and bounce back.

    I sense that my list of lessons learned will continue to grow. One of the keys I believe is to be open-minded, drop the pre-judgment and expectations. I never would have imagined that all or any of this would come from my mum’s death.

    Whether it’s grief you are dealing with or other challenging circumstances, I hope you will find the cathartic power in your experience that can lead to incredible personal growth. Whatever this may look like for you.

  • How to Rock Your Scars (Because They Mean You’re Strong)

    How to Rock Your Scars (Because They Mean You’re Strong)

    Scarred heart

    “Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.” ~Unknown

    “It’s such an ugly scar, I really don’t want anyone to see it.” This is what I told my daughter about a scar on my leg from an accident I’d experienced a year earlier.

    I can remember the day so clearly when I slipped and fell, while skating, breaking my ankle and tearing a ligament. It was a painful experience with a long recovery. But I also felt embarrassed because I got injured during such a simple and fun activity.

    I often wondered why this happened to me. One minute I was out enjoying quality time with my daughter and after the next minute I couldn’t walk for twelve weeks. I wanted to be present for her. I wanted to be active. I wanted to be involved. I wanted to be a good mother. I wondered if maybe I was overcompensating for the time I was busy keeping up with my work.

    I became so entangled in my thoughts, wondering where I went wrong and why this was happening now.

    After all was healed, I had a long scar from two surgeries. While I was happy to be up and on the move again, I was self-conscious about the five-inch mark on my ankle and leg area, along with the indentations in my skin from where the medal plate and screws were underneath.

    I thought this scar was unattractive, and it was an awful reminder of my journey to healing. I knew with the warmer weather quickly approaching that I’d want to hide it.

    I had it all planned out: I’d wear super long dresses, skirts, and pants. No one would need to stare my scar or ask me what happened. I wouldn’t have to wonder if anyone was looking at it, because I’d already taken care of that with my clothing.

    One day my eleven-year-old daughter and I were discussing summer fashion and girl talk in general. I shared my well mapped out plan to hide my scar with my clothes. Before I could finish, she quickly replied, “Why don’t you want to wear your dresses, Mommy? Why are you hiding your scar?”

    I pondered for a moment, then offered a simple response that I just didn’t like the way it looked. What she said next caught me off guard and made me teary eyed.

    She said, with conviction, “Mommy, your scar shows that you made it! It shows that you are no longer in that same place as you were before, that you overcame it. You should be proud to show that scar, Mommy, because you bounced back! That’s your ‘I made it scar.’ ”

    I was so blown away by her response and her unknowing insight into resilience.

    As parents we share much of what we know with our children to help guide them through their everyday experiences. But there are those unscripted moments when our children’s perspectives provide us with insight into how to move forward.

    Here are the lessons of self-acceptance and resilience my daughter taught me that can help you:

    Don’t Hide Your Scars

    We’ve all been through challenging situations, setbacks, disappointments, or heartbreak, and these experiences can leave a painful residue based on how we allow ourselves to heal.

    Once you make it through the healing process, sharing the lessons with others will provide a sense of empowerment for you and to those you share it with. Your “scars” or challenging experiences have a unique story of resilience, and to tell it sends a continuous chain of healing to all you interact with.

    Keeping it hidden reinforces a stigma of non-acceptance of all parts of your journey in life. If you reject these experiences, you’ll feel compelled to bottle these emotions within. That’s what I did after I left a job that, at the time, caused a great amount of stress and wasn’t beneficial for me as a parent.

    At first, I felt embarrassed to share with others, because I always saw myself as competent, fitting in anywhere and always able to get the job done. I felt defeated because I was unable to meet the demands of my role. I felt bad that I somehow couldn’t “cut it” and didn’t measure up.

    It was hurtful since I’d given everything I had, even at times pushing aside my priorities as a parent, and it still didn’t work out. So, I wanted to keep this “failure” quiet and move right along.

    However, when I began sharing my experience of trying to balance the unrealistic expectations of a big corporate organization and being a present parent, I heard stories from other women who could relate.

    This was when I realized the power of sharing my story. In talking about it I felt less ashamed, and that’s when the healing began, along with gaining a sense of empowerment.

    Try to put a spin on those tough challenges so they don’t hinder your growth and progress. Share your feelings and story with a close friend, and if you’re comfortable enough, with others as well.

    If you’re uncomfortable speaking about it, then write it down in a journal. Getting your feelings out will help purge your mind of overwhelming thoughts and cleanse your heart of the pain.

    Your Challenges Can Propel You Forward 

    This challenging experience may have been rough, but it can also be the thing you need to get you moving outside of your comfort zone and into a new direction. Sometimes those unexpected setbacks build up the “muscles” that were once hidden within us due to fear or complacency. Now you’ve experienced your fears and you see that you’ve made it.

    For example, maybe one of your worst fears is to lose your job and not being financially secure. If you’ve been laid off or fired, while this is hurtful to your self-esteem and brings about uncertainty, it may be an opportunity in disguise.

    Perhaps this is your chance to go full throttle in starting the business you’ve always wanted, or maybe this is the push you need to get you to go back to school, or into the true field you desire to work in. It might even be a much-needed opportunity to take it easy and take better care of yourself.

    Take time to process the lessons you’ve learned from this situation. Use them to help you regroup, refocus, and move ahead. What you were once afraid of is now a thing of the past.

    Use your setback as a stepping stone to a new transformation in your life.

    Be Gentle and Less Critical of Yourself and Your Journey

    You may have gone through or are currently going through a tough time and you’re having thoughts about feeling “dumb,” feeling less than or not being able to cut it.  While these thoughts are normal, spending time dwelling on them will never help you feel better and learn the lessons.

    Stop beating yourself up. Offer yourself and your past forgiveness in order to set yourself free from the pain.

    Giving so much life and emphasis to what those things mean about you is taking away from living out this one life of yours. Recognize the lessons and be kind to yourself so you can begin the next chapter of your life.

    Surround Yourself with Resilient People 

    We spend so much time in our own heads pondering questions like “Why did this happened to me?” “What did I do wrong?” Indulging the “what if” questions will cause intense overwhelm and keep you stuck in your thoughts.

    Surround yourself with resilient people who will listen to you, offer you encouragement, and help you find that spark you need to move forward. My daughter was a calming peace to my anxiety around my scars. While she shared a dose of encouragement, she unknowingly provided me with enough space to think about what she said, which gave me the ability to identify my next step for moving ahead.

    A gentle spirit with words of wisdom was the catalyst for me to think differently about my situation.

    —

    Life is not meant to be lived hidden. The entire fabric of who you are is what makes your story unique and rich with wisdom. I once was afraid and ashamed to share those lessons of setbacks and hurt, fearing judgment and rejection. But I’ve found even more strength and humanness in sharing those stories, as they are part of who I am and it’s not necessary to hide that anymore.

  • How to Boost Your Resilience So Nothing Can Keep You Down

    How to Boost Your Resilience So Nothing Can Keep You Down

    “No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That’s the only way to keep the roads clear” ~Greg Kincaid

    How is it that some people can breeze through physical and emotional pain, whereas others wince at the mere thought of it?

    Is it their genes? Their individual circumstances? Their support network?

    Or is it a certain strength of character, something each and every one of us can develop with the right tools and training?

    Two years ago I found myself needing to answer these questions.

    I was sitting in a cafe in East London, wiping the tears from my cheeks with a napkin. To my boss, who’d just informed me she no longer needed me, it would’ve looked a little overdramatic. But at least an hour had passed since she’d left.

    It was uncertain whether or not I’d be paid the previous month’s wages. I needed it to cover last month’s rent, to buy food for the following weeks, and now to call my mom. I’d moved to London only a month prior, giving up a good job and a bright future in a good company to work on a new, small but promising community project.

    Despite the words of warning and concern from my family, I believed this was going to be the start of something great. Those tears were not for losing the position or even a month’s worth of hard work, but for the excruciating feeling of having to admit I was wrong and call my parents to take me in.

    I was a mess. I felt like a failure to myself and to all those who’d been looking out for me.

    Today when I think about that unfortunate time, I realize I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. I learned an early and somewhat easy lesson in resilience.

    Resilience: ”An individual’s ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity.”

    Resilience is not something you either have or don’t have. It’s a set of behaviors, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed by anyone. And the great thing is, you don’t need to lose your job, money, or pride to cultivate it.

    There are three keystone habits to master in order to become a temple of strength and resilience in times of adversity. I’ve spent the past several years practicing them, and they’ve completely transformed my life, so naturally, I now want to share them with you.

    Some of the tips may appear simple, but they take a concerted effort to put into practice and master. Start little by little today, and they’ll soon become a part of your body’s natural stress response.

    Focus on Finding the Good

    To be resilient, you need to be able to find reasons to be optimistic—some way your circumstances may actually be beneficial to you in the long run. It’s nearly impossible to bounce back when you’re focusing on how horrible a situation is. It’s much easier when you can find blessings in disguise within difficult times or identify lessons that can help you going forward.

    But this doesn’t mean you don’t experience difficulty or distress. In fact, those who are highly resilient have a much more diverse repertoire of emotions than those who are not. They feel pain, mourn losses, and endure frustrations, but they understand that pain is temporary, and they focus on identifying the positive in the negative and opportunities in challenges.

    If we don’t learn to look for the positive, we quickly become victims to the negativity bias—which means that even when the positives and negatives of a situation are of equal intensity, the unpleasant and traumatic thoughts and emotions affect us most. This is toxic because as soon as we start to complain, we become victims. If we smile and refuse to get caught up in negative interpretations of events, we are simply experiencers.

    It took me a while to see what good could come of being left in East London with no money, job, or clue as to what I was going to do next. It was only several months later, when my life took an unexpected turn for the better, that I would start to question the whole idea of positive and negative experiences and see that each brings their own unique possibilities.

    That’s often how it happens; at first, it seems there’s only one way to interpret adversity. In retrospect, though, we often find that a chain of seemingly negative events put us directly on the path to something worthwhile. Resilient people remember this when everything seems bleak.

    Question Your Thoughts and Feelings

    One major difference between those who are resilient and those who are not is self-awareness—the ability to identify their emotions and question the thoughts that preceded them.

    We know highly resilient people still experience reactive emotions from adversity like fear and worry, but they approach them in an active manner, identifying the thoughts that led to these emotions, challenging them, and quickly adapting. This is how they’re able to bounce back and summon confidence at will.

    The best way to avoid getting caught up in emotional reactions is to practice meditation in small bouts every day.

    Traditional meditation is great, but come 3 p.m. when you’re tired and hungry and in the middle of a heated debate with a colleague, it’s easy to forget the twenty minutes of calm and tranquil bliss you experienced that morning. Incorporating small bouts of meditation into your day allows you to regularly regulate your emotional state.

    Today, I don’t actively seek out difficult conversations or sticky situations, but when they do appear on my radar, I’m fully prepared and equipped to handle them. Of course, this is easier said than done, and recently this belief was challenged when a call from a family member completely knocked me off my trajectory.

    I hadn’t seen my grandma for years, not because I didn’t care but because I got busy with life, and I unwittingly convinced myself that she wouldn’t get sick again. So when it happened, it hit me hard.

    The subsequent feelings of depression and woe that consumed me at first felt inevitable, but before I knew it, I was focusing on my breath, questioning my thoughts, and reframing the situation in a positive light.

    At first, the situation seemed to have no upsides. Then I realized this was a reminder that life is short, and I need to be in touch with my grandmother more regularly. This same reminder also rekindled her appreciation for life. Pain wasn’t the only thing that could come from this situation, but growth, opportunity, and greater meaning.

    Run Toward the Pain

    As human beings, we naturally seek refuge in comfort.

    Our minds and bodies are content following familiar patterns and routines, conserving energy and hiding from the scary unknown.

    Unfortunately, that means we become dependent on external aids like smartphones to do difficult tasks and any strenuous thinking for us. This discomfort-avoiding behavior rubs off onto other areas of our lives: one minute you’re avoiding the pain of being alone by scrolling through Facebook, and the next you may be avoiding your feelings after losing someone close to you, inhibiting your ability to move forward.

    Resilient people accept painful situations and face them head-on, trusting that they can get through them.

    Rethink the little moments of discomfort and anxiety in your day as signposts to resilience and optimal health, from setting limitations on checking your phone to having that awkward conversation with a loved one.

    Whenever I catch myself feeling even an ounce of discomfort, I stop and think, “What is the next course of action that will make me feel most satisfied: avoidance or plowing straight ahead?”

    —

    The same characteristics that make us resilient are the same traits that allow us to live stronger and more enriched lives. So look on the bright side, challenge your reactive thoughts and emotions, and learn to lean into discomfort. Then even if life gets you down, it won’t be able to keep you there.