Tiny Buddha

Tag: sadness

  • The Grief We Can’t Run from and Why We Should Embrace It

    The Grief We Can’t Run from and Why We Should Embrace It

    “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

    Grief creeps up on you when you least expect it. It reminds you of the person you have lost when you’re out for coffee with friends, watching people hug their loved ones goodbye at the airport, and when you’re at home thinking about people you should call to check-in on.

    Even when you think that enough time has passed for you to be over it, grief pulls at your heartstrings. You think about all the ways that life has changed, and your heart longs to have one last conversation with the person you have lost, one last hug, and one last shared memory.

    A wise person once told me that when you love someone the hurt never really goes away. It grows as we do and changes over time becoming a little bit easier to live with each year.

    Grief is not something we can run from. I know this now from trying to run, hoping I would never have to feel the pain I was carrying deep within my heart.

    In November of 2020 I lost my godfather, a person I loved and cared for deeply. I also learned about my estranged father’s death when I googled his name. The reality that my estranged family had not had to decency to tell me of his death stung. I also lost people I had known and were connected to in my community.

    The news of these deaths hit me with an initial shock—they did not seem real. For a day after discovering the news of each loss I found myself walking around in a blur, unable to eat or sleep. The next day I was able to force myself to function again. It was as if the people I had lost were not really gone.

    When friends and family learned of the losses I had faced they reached out to me and offered support. I assured them that although I was sad, I was fine. Growing up in an unsupportive family I did not know how to accept their support, as it felt foreign to me. So, to avoid talking about my feelings and facing my pain, I turned the conversation back to them and asked about their work and/or their children. Slowly, people stopped asking how I was doing or how I was feeling because on the surface I seemed more than fine.

    I was functional in my professional roles, writing articles, engaging in research, mentoring students, collaborating with colleagues, and making progress in my PhD program. I appeared like myself during online work and social events. I continued to support my friends and neighbors as if nothing had changed. Silently, I was fighting a battle that even I knew nothing about.

    Each day I would force myself out of bed and tackle a lengthy to-do list comprised of personal and professional work and obligations. In the evenings I would force myself to work or engage in physical activity so that I did not have time to feel. In the initial darkest moments, I convinced myself that if I kept going, kept moving forward, I would not have to feel the pain I carried in my heart. 

    I became more productive than normal. I wrote more academic and non-academic articles, I volunteered and provided support to online communities, and I readily volunteered to edit colleagues’ work. In the few moments of downtime I gave myself each day I would either sit blankly staring at my computer or find myself crying. I couldn’t feel sad, I did not have time to feel sad, I needed to keep going I told myself.

    The pandemic made it easier to live in denial about my losses and pain because normal rituals associated with death, like funeral services, had either been postponed or restricted to a select number of individuals. Perhaps if these rituals had been in place, I would have been forced to address my grief in a healthier manner.

    I continued to run from my pain by adding accolades to my resume and taking on as many projects as I could find. Spring blurred into summer, and I found myself becoming irritated by the slightest annoyance. Sleepless nights and reoccurring nightmares became normal. I had less patience for my students, and I struggled to be there for the people who needed me.

    I found my mind becoming slower, and by the end of June I was struggling to function. Yet, because I knew what was expected of me and did not want my friends or family to worry, I hid it.

    As pandemic restrictions began to ease, and other people’s lives began to return to normal, I became painfully aware that my life could not. I saw my friends hugging their fathers in pictures on social media. Friends recounted seeing family for the first time in over a year and shared pictures of them hugging their loved ones. People in my life began to look forward to the future with a sense of hopeful anticipation. Work began to talk of resuming in-person activities.

    I could no longer use the pandemic to hide from my grief, and I became paralyzed by it. I had to feel the pain. I had no choice. I couldn’t function, I couldn’t sleep, and I could barely feel anything except for the lump in my throat and the ominous weight in my chest.

    My godfather, my biggest cheerleader and the person who made me feel safe, was gone. It felt as though anything I did or accomplished didn’t matter the same way anymore. I longed for conversations with him I would never be able to have. The passing of time made me aware of the changes that had taken place in my life and how much I had changed without him.

    Throughout July I found myself crying constantly, but I was compassionate with myself. I no longer felt I had to propel myself forward with a sense of rigid productivity. Instead, I focused on slowing down and feeling everything. I asked work for extensions on projects, which I had previously felt ashamed to do. Other obligations I either postponed or cancelled.

    I found myself questioning my own life’s purpose. Had I truly been focusing on the things that mattered? What mattered to me now that the people I cared about most were gone? How could I create a fulfilling life for myself?

    There were days I didn’t get out of bed from the weight of my grief. Yet there were also days when I began to feel again—feelings of sadness, peace, joy, and even happiness that I had been repressing for months.

    I allowed myself to cry when I needed to or excuse myself from a social event when I was feeling triggered. When feelings of longing washed over me, I accepted them and acknowledged that a part of me would always miss the people I had lost. Within the intense moments of pain and loss I found comfort in the happy memories, the conversations, and the life we had shared.

    Slowly, the nightmares disappeared, and I began to sleep better again. Although I was sad, I also began to experience moments of happiness and feel hopeful again.

    The grief I had tried so desperately to run from became a strange source of comfort. Grief reminded me that the people I had lost had loved me, and the fabric of their lives had intertwined with mine in order to allow me to be the person I am today.

    The questions that plagued me, about what mattered to me, gradually evolved into answers that became action plans toward a more fulfilling life. In running toward grief and embracing it I made myself whole again and discovered a life I never would have otherwise known.

    We instinctively want to avoid our grief because the pain can feel unbearable, but our grief is a sign we’ve loved and been loved, and a reminder to use the limited time we have to become all that we can be.

  • How My Son Taught Me That Crying Can Boost My Mental Health

    How My Son Taught Me That Crying Can Boost My Mental Health

    “And some days life is just hard. And some days are just rough. And some days you just gotta cry before you move forward. And all of that is okay.” ~Unknown

    Over the years I’ve built myself a bit of a reputation as “the emotional one.”

    I was always the first to cry at weddings, and that included my own. At that one I barely stopped throughout the ceremony! And as soon as I’m beyond the half-way point of any good holiday, it’s inevitable that a pretty epic sob is waiting in the wings.

    At this point I should probably mention that I’m a forty-three-year-old male. I also live in the UK, a country that’s proud of its “Bulldog spirit” and “stiff upper lip.” What this really means is that we’re a country where many people are uncomfortable with their own emotions, and shockingly bad at processing them.

    That brings me on to the point of this post—and it’s a happy post. I’m delighted to report that in the past few years I’ve come to see the true value in being able to cry, and being unashamed to do so.

    This doesn’t mean I’m somebody who has frequent public meltdowns that make people uncomfortable! In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’ve reached the point where I’ve learned to recognize my own internal pressure valve. I know when it needs releasing, and know how to do it in a private, dignified, and healthy way.

    Human beings are the only animals with the ability to cry. It clearly has a purpose, and it doesn’t take much research to discover it has serious benefits, both mentally and physiologically. Crying is thought to reduces stress hormones and relax the nervous system.

    There are alternatives to crying, and we see them all the time: unhealthy behaviors, addictions, outbursts of anger and violence, and patterns of arguments and disharmony.

    That takes me back to the whole “stiff upper lip” thing. Emotions have to come out somewhere, and in my experience it’s the people who are fixated on being “strong” and “manly” who live lives cluttered with arguments and hangovers.

    On balance, I’d much rather have the ability to cry, and no shame in doing so. Recently, I feel I’ve learned to take it further than that to the point that I can use crying as an extremely useful tool in my mental health armoury.

    So, what got me to that point? The answer is simple: fatherhood.

    My oldest son has just turned seven years old. And he’s very much like me. It’s a much-misused word, but he’s a “sensitive” lad. He’s hugely empathetic, and a wonderful gentle soul. He’s also very sentimental and—again like me—as likely to be touched by joy as by sadness.

    Like everyone else in the world, we’ve had a challenging time since the pandemic began. One of the hardest parts has been navigating the children through it. This means dealing with their lockdown loneliness, but also constantly working out what to tell them so they’re as protected as possible without us insulting their intelligence.

    Another part of this is recognizing when it’s all getting a bit much for them.

    I can pretty accurately predict when a “meltdown” is incoming for my son. And I always ensure that I’m there ready for him when he wants to let the tears out. I encourage him to take as long as he needs. I cringe when I see parents saying, “that’s enough now,” or worse.

    None of this means I’m trying to raise a child who’s constantly in tears! But I am trying to raise a child who knows that having a good howl is a wiser and more evolved way of releasing emotion than punching somebody in the playground or having an undignified argument.

    While I’ve been teaching him this, I’ve been learning myself. Just as I’ve learned to predict when he may soon need to “let it all out,” I’ve become much more attuned to when I need to too.

    I have some mental health issues. Anxiety is the main one, with a generous scattering of OCD and some periodic depression as the cherries on top.

    One thing that indicates my mental health is in trouble is when I can’t cry. Depression is often misunderstood. For me, when it’s at its worst, it manifests as being emotionally empty and numb.

    In fact, “the big cry” often marks the turning point in a spell of depression. It means I’ve started to feel again. I’ve learned the pattern over many years, and it’s now got to the point where I can say “I need to cry.”

    And that’s a really powerful thing. I know what I need to do, so that empowers me to consciously try to do it nowadays.

    As we’ve already established, crying can release stress hormones and calm the nervous system. Who wouldn’t want to do that, especially during a spell of poor mental health?

    The trouble is, far too many people are conditioned to feel ashamed of showing emotion. But it’s not like I phone all my mates and say, “I’ve been feeling a bit low, so I’m setting aside an hour today to go in the bedroom with a bunch of sad songs and some tissues.”

    This last happened just a few days ago, and I did tell my wife my intentions. That in itself involved a little embarrassment and vulnerability. But when I re-emerged a little later, she said that I looked like a different person—with a bounce in my step and colour back in my cheeks.

    That’s why I’ve written this. It is deeply personal, because nobody’s ever proud of having a good cry. I can’t help wondering whether that should change.

    I am proud that my children don’t have to live in a house where there are needless arguments. A home where we process emotions in a healthy way—a way that humans alone have access to.

    So get that “crying tunes” playlist ready. Learn which old photos set you off, or which films are certain to “hit you in the feels.” And don’t be afraid to tuck yourself away for a while and use the power of emotion to enhance your mental health.

    To be clear, this isn’t a weapon I have to deploy frequently or publicly, but it’s one I’ve come to love having at my disposal. It’s there for you too, so don’t be scared or embarrassed to make use of it. The alternatives may be more popular with the “stiff upper lip” crowd, but they don’t benefit them, or the people around them.

    Let it out.

  • 10 Things to Do When You Feel Sad, Hopeless, and Defeated

    10 Things to Do When You Feel Sad, Hopeless, and Defeated

    “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” ~J.K. Rowling

    I’m no stranger to feeling hopeless and defeated. After many failed relationships, physical, sexual and emotional abuse my entire life, two bankruptcies, and the recent loss of my online business (October 2020), you could say I’ve been through enough to last two lifetimes.

    I’ll admit, there were many times I wanted it all to end. There were many days I just didn’t know how much more I could handle. My recent loss has devastated me beyond words. Everything I’ve worked so hard for in the last three years has completely been obliterated. I’m numb and feel defeated almost every day.

    At fifty-eight years old, starting over doesn’t interest me, but I have no choice. I know what to expect. I’ve been here before. It’s ugly, messy, frustrating, stressful, and exhausting. Every day I wake up I don’t really feel like getting to the computer to work.

    I don’t really feel like doing anything, to be honest, but lay in bed and cry. I go through serious waves of anxiety throughout the day. They hit me fast, hard, and without warning. I want to throw up. I want to curl up in a ball and die. I want someone to tell me this is all a bad dream and tomorrow things will be back to normal.

    None of that happens. And I force myself to get to work and start a new day.

    Your Struggles and Pain Are Real

    Pain is pain, chaos is chaos. No matter what it looks like to you. Never let anyone tell you your feelings are ridiculous. Don’t ever think that you’re overreacting. What your feeling is real, and you need to honor your emotions, feel all the feels. Just don’t stay there. The longer you stay down, the harder it is to get back up.

    Here are ten things to do when you are feeling defeated, hopeless, helpless, and sad—all things that have helped me, that I hope help you too.

    1. Cry your eyes out.

    Too many of us hold back our tears because we think it’s a sign of weakness. It is absolutely not, and it’s almost mandatory to get those tears out. Go back to the last time you had a good cry fest and try to remember how you felt afterward. I’m guessing you felt like a ton of bricks was just lifted off your shoulders.

    Crying is very therapeutic. Do it. As often as you have to. Scream and cry into a pillow if you have to but get those tears out.

    2. Call a friend.

    While this almost sounds too simple, most don’t even think about doing this either because they don’t want to burden their friends, or because they’re too stuck on their problems to consider talking about something else.

    Pick one person you absolutely love talking to and just chat your cute little face off. You can talk about your problem if you think it will help, or you can use this as an opportunity to get your mind off of things. Just talk!! About anything, everything, silly things and nothing.

    I remember the day my business crashed, and I was so angry and upset but also embarrassed because I didn’t want anyone to know what happened to me and that my business was gone. After a week I decided to call one of my dear friends, and not only was he great at comforting me but also reassuring me that things were going to be okay. It was such a huge relief to get this confirmation from a friend.

    Sometimes we need to hear comforting words!

    3. Volunteer.

    I tell everyone this. If you’re sad, go volunteer. Like right now. You can’t even imagine the power behind helping someone or something (aka furry critters) in need. Your heart fills up and then explodes, you cry happy tears, and it honestly just gives you so much joy.

    Find an organization that resonates with you and call them. Go spend an hour a week there. This will soon become your happy place and something you will look forward to every week.

    4. Write yourself a love letter.

    I’ll be honest, I haven’t written one in a while, but I think it’s time.

    A love letter to yourself is so powerful and therapeutic. In this letter you tell yourself all the amazing and awesome things about yourself. You list all the reasons you shouldn’t feel like a loser. You tell yourself to brush off your bum and pick yourself back up again.

    You can go on and on about how wonderfully amazing you are. Write out all the things you love about yourself and all your radiant and redeeming qualities.

    Now before you say, “Oh, I don’t love anything about myself,” stop right there.

    Go look in the mirror right now. I bet you have the most beautiful eyes and the most sweet smile ever. Or maybe you are a feisty, determined person. Or maybe you have a heart of gold! I bet there are a million awesome things about you. Find them and write about them.

    5. Put on some loud music and sing and dance.

    Oh yeah. Choose the loudest, thrashiest music you have (and love) and crank up the stereo. Or maybe you love country or jazz or whatever! Turn it up and rip off the knob. Dance, sing, jump around your house like a silly fool.

    Sometimes when I’m feeling down, I put on the saddest music with the hardest hitting lyrics, sing loud, cry my heart out, and remarkably afterward I feel a million times better!!

    Let loose and lose all your cares and woes in your favorite music. You’re gonna feel amazing, you’ll even get a little workout in, and your adrenaline will be pumped up a wee bit, so you’ll maybe even feel unstoppable! Go you!

    6. Go for a walk.

    Another simple thing to do that we often overlook. For many of us, when we’re feeling really sad, we don’t want to get dressed and go out. We want to stay inside and cry and eat junk food (more on that later), but you can’t stay there forever.

    You have to get yourself out of your dark place. You have to take action steps (pardon the pun) to move forward and be happy again.

    Get your shoes on and get outside. You never know who you’re going to run into or what kind of super cool things can happen to you. Be open to surprises and chance meetings. Or maybe you’ll just find and see little things that bring a smile to your face.

    7. Watch funny movies and eat junk food.

    Yes, I said it. Eat junk food, aka comfort food. They call it comfort food for a reason. Because that’s exactly what it does. And yes, I get that we may have a teeny sore belly in the morning, all depending on how much comfort food you consumed the night before, but really, chocolate and chips and donuts and cake really do the soul good.

    A small word of warning here, though: Only do this if you can let yourself enjoy eating and aren’t mindlessly binging to numb your feelings, and please don’t make this a daily habit. We all know eating junk food is bad for us. It’s a nice quick fix on a really sad day but not something you should do all the time. Remember, life is all about balance too. That includes your eating habits.

    So find your fave movies—I usually opt for funny ones or super action thrillers—and lose yourself in it. Forget your cares and woes even if only for two hours or so and let yourself indulge a little.

    8. Write a truth letter.

    Yes, I love writing letters. It’s the best therapy out there, I swear! Much like a love letter to yourself, a truth letter is a letter you will write to someone or something that is causing you grief and sorrow.

    This is where you get to write out all your anger, all your hurt; every damn emotion you feel about this person/thing, get it all out! I know some people who have written truth letters that were thirty pages long. You write until you can’t write anymore!

    This is something you can do every time you have hateful or angry thoughts about this person or thing. Eventually the thoughts won’t show up so often.

    9. Set a timer.

    We already know we can’t stay in this sad dark place for too long, or it will consume us. After a few weeks of feeling like this set a timer for fifteen minutes, twice a day. In this time slot, feel angry, sad, cry, scream, or do whatever else you have to do, but when the timer is up try to compose yourself and shift your attention elsewhere—on your work, a hobby, helping a friend, anything other than your own problems.

    Negative thoughts will arise outside of your time slot. But remember, you can choose whether or not to engage with them. You always have a choice to let your thoughts pass without getting caught up in your mental stories. That’s up to you to do.

    Yes, this is hard to do, but the benefit is that you are allowing yourself time to grieve without allowing your grief to totally consume you and dominate your days.

    10. Have a ‘me’ day.

    Even if you can’t take the whole day, try to take at least a few hours to pamper yourself. Get a manicure or pedicure or do one for yourself at home. Get your hair done, take yourself out on a date. Do something you enjoy, something that gets you into a state of flow.

    Whatever it is that you do, do it in honor of yourself and how amazing you are. Take this time to love yourself, as hard as that may be, and just be present with you and only you.

    —

    As I go through my difficult time, I keep telling myself that this is temporary, I’m gonna be okay, and to keep the faith. I believe everything always works out in the end, exactly the way it’s supposed to, whether we understand it or not, and this brings me comfort.

    But don’t deny your emotions.

    I think the most important thing to remember is that you must honor and feel your feelings, but you can’t stay there. It’s important to take steps to get back to your ‘normal,’ whatever that looks like for you, or to accept that it’s time to create a new normal.

    Baby steps are better than no steps at all. Do one or two little things every day and before you know it, you’ll be smiling and feeling better about yourself and life again.

    You got this, babe!

  • 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.

  • When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

    When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

    “You don’t have to be brave all of the time. You are not damaged or defeated. Have patience. Give yourself permission to grieve, to cry, and to heal. Allow a bit of compassion, you’re doing the best you can. We all are.” ~Unknown

    Growing up, I received the message that everything had to look a certain way. It was only okay to feel positive emotions, and any expression of unruly emotions was totally unacceptable.

    It wasn’t that anyone directly said this to me. I wasn’t given a written set of rules to follow. I wasn’t given any speeches or trainings about how to present myself in public. But the message came across.

    It was relayed to me in phrases like “Don’t cry, you’re fine,” “Relax, people are watching,” “Just ignore them,” and “Don’t let things bother you.” It was conveyed to me through subtle criticisms of my reactions, which in my mind translated to “You aren’t good enough if you feel bad.”

    In many ways, I was raised to feel uncomfortable with my emotions. I came to believe that negative emotions were a defect within me rather than a natural and essential part of my being. It wasn’t anything my parents did deliberately to try and hurt me. In fact, they were probably trying to avoid seeing me in pain. They were simply following what most people and parents do.

    We advise others to avoid their pain and upset feelings. To snap back into shape, even after immense tragedy. 

    We hear things like “Your cousin died? Well, he’s in heaven now.” “You had to put your dog to sleep? Well, he’s just crossed the rainbow bridge; and anyway, you can always get another dog.”

    People don’t advise you to sit with uncomfortable emotions. They don’t tell you it’s okay to feel sad, hurt, or scared.

    As a young and impressionable little person, I internalized my parents’ messages and fought against every “negative” emotion I had. That is, until the feelings I was trying so hard to avoid took over my body and manifested themselves as a series of seemingly unexplainable health issues and panic attacks.

    As I got older, I became so anxious that I couldn’t hide it anymore. Once I reached the point of being uncontrollably uncomfortable, I set out on a journey of self-exploration.

    I came to realize that my only choice was to examine what I was feeling and explore what those feelings could tell me about myself. For the first time in my life, I decided to figure out what my emotions were really about. I decided to find out why I was so damn anxious.

    Many of us are embarrassed and ashamed of our own feelings and thoughts. 

    We think our unfavorable emotions make us weak, and we worry that other people would think less of us if they knew how bad we actually felt. If we allow dominant ideas about tough emotions to take over our own thoughts, we can wind up feeling shame for the rest of our lives.

    When we’re emotional, we can feel completely powerless, like we’re never going to gain any kind of control over our thoughts, bodies, or surroundings. It can feel so uncomfortable to be upset that we choose to numb ourselves rather than risk feeling any pain.

    For so many years, I had it all wrong. But once it clicked, everything changed.

    The point of being alive isn’t to numb our feelings; we’re always going to feel something, and sadness is always going to try expressing itself in our lives. That’s a fact of life. We can try to avoid it all we want, but the more we distance ourselves from this reality, the more control it gains over us. 

    Freedom comes when we can feel our tough emotions expressing themselves, but no longer let them rule our lives. 

    The more we try to avoid our true nature, the more whatever we don’t want to feel shows up with a vengeance.

    The more I tried to rid myself of worry, sadness, negative thoughts, and panic attacks, the more they seemed to persist. The more they persisted, the more reactive I got to feeling anxiety. And the more reactive I became, the more power anxiety had over my life.

    When we try to get rid of anything in life, we create resistance; and the more we resist something, the more it shows up. Famous psychologist Carl Jung stated that “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” So, the goal here isn’t to get rid of anxiety, panic attacks, or sadness, it’s to work on our intolerance of those feelings. It’s to learn how to manage ourselves through the discomfort of it all.

    We don’t gain comfort, self-compassion, and calm by resisting or wishing things were different; we reach true calm by letting it be okay when we’re sad and anxious, and then letting it go.

    The more you fight it, the more it will show up; the more you let it be, the less power it will have over you.

    This is, of course, easier said than done. It’s a natural instinct to try banishing anything that feels uncomfortable. However, by continuously practicing deep acceptance for what is, we put ourselves in the best position to change it, or even achieve freedom from it, so that we can move past it.

    Here’s what I did to pull myself back from numbing myself and stumble into my new world with tolerance of my emotions:

    1. Know that it’s okay to be anxious and upset.

    Without a doubt, the most important thing to remember is that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed and stressed out. It’s okay to feel lost and unsure. It’s alright to have no idea how you’re going to hold it together sometimes. We put so much pressure on ourselves to be happy all the time. It’s okay to acknowledge when times are tough. It’s alright to feel anxious, even if it’s uncomfortable.

    2. Become an observer of your life.

    Instead of judging and getting angry with myself for feeling a certain way, I decided to be an observer of my emotions and environment. I chose to slow down and watch. I remind myself that when we’re busy judging ourselves for the way we feel, we aren’t honoring ourselves.

    Our emotions are involuntary; we have no control over them. However, what we do have control over is how we decide to respond to those emotions. When we accept our emotions as they come, take ownership of them, and avoid taking them out on the people we love, we train ourselves to manage our emotions from within.

    3. Decide who you want to be.

    I’ve found that it’s much easier to be happy, nice, and upbeat when your life is going well. It’s a lot harder to hold onto yourself when stress and anxiety are high. Knowing this, I work at trying to stay true to who I am, even in unfortunate situations. Even if I’m feeling agitated or upset, I know I can choose to respond in ways that allow me to shine through. Just because I’m not feeling so great, doesn’t mean I need to take it out on anyone I care about.

    4. Know it’s okay to feel strong emotions.

    During hard times our emotions can feel more intense. We may lose hope or be more reactive. Even though it’s totally fine to maintain an optimistic perspective of life, it’s also important to allow ourselves to process and feel the full spectrum of emotions.

    5. Remember that even negative emotions have a place in our lives.

    Sadness, anger, frustration, boredom, anxiety etc. all have a place in our lives. The key is not to avoid or numb these emotions, but to experience them and learn to manage them effectively so they don’t run our lives.

    Unfortunately, many of us don’t know how to manage our negative feelings—in part, because we’ve been taught to repress them. As children, many of us are told not to cry, which leads us to believe that crying is bad.

    As adults, when we experience emotions like depression or anxiety, our natural impulse is usually to mask those feelings. We may have an inner voice telling us to forget about it; we may even turn to drugs, food restriction, or binge eating to distract us from our emotions.

    As human beings, we’re simply incapable of numbing a select set of emotions. So, when we numb sadness, we also numb happiness, joy, and other positive emotions. What’s worse is that as we struggle with our own negative emotions, we may create even more suffering. It’s hard work to deny something we’re truly feeling. It takes energy; it wears us down. So rather than try to ignore our feelings, it better serves us to work on observing them.

    It’s alright to admit that you’re hurting or struggling. We all go through hard times. And maybe we can find a bit of comfort in remembering that we aren’t alone. But first, we must accept what’s happening. Then we can decide how we want to best deal with it.

  • When Your Heart Is Broken, Just Keep Moving

    When Your Heart Is Broken, Just Keep Moving

    “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have is not permanent.” ~Jean Kerr

    Here’s the thing no one tells you about dating—it sucks. The uncertainty, the inconsistency, the stress. Dating has always been easy for me. Or so I thought.

    The more I think back, the more I see I accepted things I really shouldn’t have in all of my relationships. I allowed my needs to be put last, I took on blame, and I stayed when I wasn’t made a priority.  For what reason I am still not entirely sure. But I can tell you this: When you meet someone in your late twenties that you believe you will spend your life with, you think you have it all figured out.

    And then you find yourself thirty and single.

    Dating in New York is hard. Just watch any Sex and the City episode. But what’s harder is learning how to sit with yourself. Learning how to take the risk of feeling the true depths of loneliness and fear—the fear of being alone, fear that no one will want you, fear of never being enough.

    But this is not about dating. No, this is about heartbreak.

    What do you do when you find yourself single after years in a relationship? You cry. You scream. You fall apart.

    Throughout the past year, I have done a lot of sitting with myself. And you know what? It’s horrible. It is by far one of the hardest things I have ever done. Imagine sitting on the floor, unable to pick yourself up, crying so hard your insides seem like they are coming out.

    That was me. Being picked up off the floor by my parents.

    Every part of me was shattered. Daily functioning was nearly impossible, and I couldn’t go an hour without crying. The man I loved with every part of me wasn’t going to be with me anymore.

    Then came the self-blame. I had been in relationships before, but this was the first man I pictured a life with. This was my fault; I wasn’t what he needed and I needed to fix this. This played in my mind over and over again.

    Anxiety took hold, and I was on a crusade to reach him and talk to him. Every attempt drove me deeper and deeper into a black hole of sadness. Until one day I just stopped trying to reach him.

    Over the past year, we have popped in and out of each other’s lives in some way. You might think that would make this all less painful. I did. But after every time we spoke, I was back down the rabbit hole of darkness.

    I tried everything I could think of to make the pain stop. I read all the articles, I read books, I got a pet, I meditated, I continued therapy, I put my all into going out with my friends, and in the silence the emotions still flooded me.

    The irony to all of this is I am a mental health professional, yet in the deep darkness of sadness, I couldn’t pull myself out. Here’s the biggest realization: You can’t make it stop.

    Severe heartbreak changes you. I don’t remember who I was fully before him. But I know who I am after him.

    To this day whenever my anxiety rises, I pick up my phone to call him. Do something different. Write, read, call someone else. Changing the pattern is hard but worth it.

    I will always have a permanent scar on my heart. I can point to it and show you exactly where my heart broke. Today it is stitched together. There are parts that are healed and parts where the sadness still comes through.

    You have to feel it. The intense emotion, the despair, the elation. It all plays a role in healing.

    I think I may always have moments of what could have been, but here today I am opening myself up to let the light in. To allow the possibility of someone else into my life.

    Here is what I have learned on my journey of healing so far.

    1. Don’t accept less than what you think you deserve.

    2. You will never be too much.

    3. You are enough.

    4. You are worthy.

    5. Some days just kind of suck.

    When you finally have stopped crying, the wind tends to blow thirty degrees to the left and boom, you are standing in the middle of a parking lot, tears running down your face. That’s okay. Accept it, live in it, and set it free.

    I didn’t see how I could go on without him in my life. Sometimes I still have moments of this. The memories flood my mind, my eyes well up with tears, and the pain in my chest makes me feel like my heart will explode any second.

    It gets better.

    Through all of this I have met some truly wonderful people and have discovered my badass inner warrior. I have found myself again and I am nourishing her daily. That means taking a moment to meditate in the morning, going for reiki healing, realigning my chakras, reading books, writing, and just stopping to let myself feel.

    Here I am today speaking my truth. A truth of love, light, heartache, pain and everything in between.

    My advice to you—breathe in, breathe deep, feel all of it, cry it out, laugh it out, embrace every single feeling. One day it all starts to feel normal again, and one day your heart will be open. You cannot wish it away no matter how hard you try.

    Setbacks are part of the process. Allow yourself the space to feel horribly sad and then pick up and keep going. It doesn’t matter what direction you are going in, just move.

    Lean in it. Feel it. Breathe it. Be it. Let it go.

  • The Practice of Staying Present Will Heal You

    The Practice of Staying Present Will Heal You

  • How I Transformed My Anxiety and What to Do If You Feel Emotionally Stuck

    How I Transformed My Anxiety and What to Do If You Feel Emotionally Stuck

    “There is still vitality under the snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.” ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull

    For as long as I can recall, I have always been a fretful and anxious person. Mine was a low-key anxiety that’s always colored the background of my life, a constant companion of ambiguous dread and imminent doom (just around the corner!)

    The annoying part was that I never quite knew why the anxiety hung around. There weren’t any real situations in my life that evoked this constant, nagging fear.

    I have tried various techniques to manage my anxiety. I tried deep breathing. I tried to balance out the fearful thoughts that sometimes follow the feeling of fear with logical investigation of the facts.

    I tried self-hypnosis—imagining a safe place in the depths of my psyche protected by multiple layers of force fields. I tried going toward the fear instead of running from it by putting myself in fear-inducing situations, so I could learn to tolerate it better. I tried self-psycho-analysis.

    All these produced various small results, but always, always there was something missing. I somehow felt like I did not go all the way to the bottom of my anxiety. 

    Then I picked up mindfulness, in those days before it became so well known. I learned on my own and in various courses, to make space for my anxiety.

    Above all, I discovered that my anxiety wasn’t me. That was an important piece of the puzzle. And yet, there was still a lot of the puzzle missing. My gut feeling was telling me, there’s got to be more.

    And then I came upon a book on Focusing. This is a method discovered by the late psychologist-philosopher Eugene Gendlin. He discovered that people who engaged in a specific kind of internal exploration of their experiences often came away feeling that their emotional struggles have transformed, quite literally.

    They no longer felt the same way before they started the internal exploration process. Even though the situation that had caused them to feel that way remained unchanged, how they understood it and felt about it had become radically different.

    I was entranced, so I read everything I could about this method. I tried it out on myself…

    And fell flat on my face. It didn’t work and I was still anxious. Only now, I was even more anxious because it was tinged with a near panicky sense that what I needed was just within my reach but I could not grasp it! I pictured my anxiety flashing the victory sign in my mind.

    Then thankfully, I took a course with a Focusing teacher in the United Kingdom and I got it.

    My anxiety started to shift.

    How I Understand It: Vital Emotions and Blocks

    We are all born with naturally flowing emotions that guide us and give us information about our lives, our worlds, and our needs. I call these “vital emotions.” No matter what form they take (joy, anger, grief, gratitude, and so forth), the experience of them moving within and through us unfettered makes us feel alive.

    Just look at babies. They are always experiencing naturally flowing emotions and they are little bundles of vitality. When they are angry, they scream without concern. When happy, their mirth is disinhibited.

    However, as we grow up, we learn to cut off these emotions. For instance, some people become overly rational at the expense of feeling emotions, like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Alternatively, some of us fall into stuck emotional patterns that repeat over and over again without getting us anywhere but into trouble (my anxiety is one example).

    I call cutting off emotions or stuck emotions “blocks.” We tend to pick them up as we bump along in life. Focusing is a method to help us free up our blocks and get in touch with our vital emotions.

    What I Learned About My Emotions

    I learned in Focusing to take on a curious and self-compassionate approach to my emotions. I also learned to drop my awareness down into body to experience the sensations of my emotions in real time, and use these sensations to guide my discovery of the layers of information contained within my emotions.

    From there, I learned to decode what my emotions are telling me that I needed at that point in time. When I accessed this new understanding, I started to feel my anxiety transform.

    When I focused on my anxiety block in an open-minded and compassionate manner, I discovered that it felt like a kind of jittery electricity coursing through my body, and occasionally thickening into a lump in my chest.

    Fascinatingly, I also found that I had a tendency to hold back in my actions, my breathing, and even my voice (I had trouble projecting my voice). It was like I had put the brakes on inside myself.

    Through gentle and persistent questioning around these bodily responses, I discovered that I picked up my anxiety block because the adults in my life had subtly and not so subtly put me down when I tried to express my vital emotions.

    I remembered being shamed for showing my vital emotions like anger or even dizzy joy. Then I was told I was too sensitive when I was feeling vulnerable and upset. My anxiety was telling me that I could not let my guard down. I could not afford to be myself fully.

    At this point, my anxiety had started to shift physically and it was replaced by another emotion—sadness. Sadness that I wasn’t allowed to be myself.

    As I paid the same gentle attention to how my body held this sadness, it shifted once more and transformed into anger. I was angry that people could do this to me, no matter how well meaning their intentions. How dare they! How could they?

    With that line of thought, I knew that I wasn’t going to let people discount my emotions again! I felt physically stronger with this new determination. I had moved pass my anxious block and touched the procession of my vital emotions hiding by it. And then, I realized that my anxiety was trying to protect me from the devastating forces of shame and ridicule. I needed to feel safe in an unsafe environment.

    They only way I knew how was to block off my vital emotions least showing them got me into trouble. This realization gave rise to a warm feeling of self-compassion—I was doing the best I could to protect myself and my anxiety was my warning system.

    A Realistic Transformative Method

    Needless to say, I fell in love with focusing and undertook more training in it. I have found my method of transforming my life-long anxiety. Do I still struggle with it? Of course, but now it feels different. It no longer is a pervasive unknown fear. It has shrunk and only occasionally pops up. And when it does, I know how to engage with it to transform it.

    Try This Out

    The next time you feel emotionally stuck or have an inexplicable emotional reaction, take a moment to pause and focus on how it feels in your body as a sensation. Notice where in your body you feel it the strongest.

    A good place to start noticing is the space within your throat, chest, and belly. Simply spend a minute or two trying to describe the raw sensation of the emotional reaction, in real time—“Right now, how does it feel?” You might notice that the sensation changing. If it does, simple stay on top of it by describing the new sensation.

    Simply tuning in this way helps you create a unique and open-minded relationship to your emotions. It is also one of the crucial steps in focusing. See if you could make this into a daily habit. Remember, emotions transform when we try to understand them in an open-minded way.

  • Why Trying to Feel Good Can Make You Feel Bad

    Why Trying to Feel Good Can Make You Feel Bad

    “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” ~Paulo Coelho

    We’re bombarded by images of people living apparently perfect lives. They suffer no bereavements or breakups or losses or failures. They look perfect, make perfect choices, and act perfect.

    Everyone seems to love them as they sail from success to success, with zero misfortunes, mistakes, or regrets.

    So, it’s easy to believe that we, too, need to be perfect.

    I had a simple definition of success when I was younger. It was whatever made others admire, or at least accept me.

    So, I aimed for better jobs. This was defined in terms of salary.

    As a young doctor, I started out in a poorly paid job. I made it through a PhD, then an MBA. The research was impactful, but what excited me as much was that doors opened to me.

    Instead of me chasing jobs, they started chasing me. I sought to double my salary. When that happened, I sought to double it again.

    This game kept going, and to the world I was a success. My mother took pride in telling people what I did.

    My life at home told a different story.

    I had to travel a lot at a time when our children were young. Even though I tried to confine that to a week at a time, I was becoming a stranger to them.

    A simple incident proved to be a turning point.

    I was in our sitting room going through some notes before setting out for work. Our young son was playing. He became noisier and noisier.

    My mind was on my notes, and his was on his play.

    Then he started running up and down the sitting room. It was going well for him until I reacted.

    He was probably imitating some noisy vehicle or airplane. At least that’s what it sounded like to me, as I tried to concentrate on my notes.

    As he ran past me, I put my arm out to stop him.

    Unfortunately, my adult arm was like a wall to him. Our little boy hit my arm and fell to the floor.

    This remains one of the incidents I’m deeply ashamed of.

    He burst into tears, and my partner rushed to pick him up and comfort him.

    My job continued to be center stage, but the scales were starting to fall from my eyes.

    I tried to make it up to him, visiting a motor show together. He loved the shiny cars, including the one Michael Schumacher had driven in the Formula One championship.

    As he held my hand throughout our motor show visit, I began to experience more deeply the meaning of the saying “Love makes the world go round.”

    The piles of responsibilities in my job began to weigh on me more heavily. I was walking a tightrope of stress, irritability, and worry.

    A routine medical exam confirmed what I had suspected: I was an unfit, overweight wreck, in need of medication to keep my heart and circulation in working order. Our family life was far from the ideal picture that our beautiful home must have presented to the world. I was a well-paid but emotionally exhausted wreck.

    We talked it over and my partner was very clear. Our family life too was beginning to resemble a wreck. The money was simply not worth it.

    We should uproot ourselves and make a new life, whatever that brought.

    Since then, I’ve been through many years of life experiences.

    I went from being an absentee parent to making time to play with our children nearly every day. That remains one of the greatest sources of satisfaction to me.

    I went from measuring success in purely financial terms to a wider definition of success. The spark that had gone out of our marriage was rekindled and the embers grew steadily into a new romance.

    My passion for music making had been put on the back burner for years, but I’ve since nurtured it. I try to make some time each day to create music, and have had the good fortune to perform and record with some great musicians.

    I started converting all my medical and scientific knowledge into practical actions. I lost inches from my waist and no longer needed any medication.

    However, the biggest changes occurred in my inner life.

    Stress, irritability, and worry used to bother me. I don’t mean just in terms of experiencing them. I mean being annoyed and angry with myself for not feeling good at all times.

    Aren’t we all meant to try and feel good all the time? Isn’t that what makes a good life? Isn’t constant happiness our highest ideal?

    We look online or in glossy magazines and see celebrities smiling and laughing on the red carpet. We see sages and gurus glowing. We see so many apparently perfect people living perfect lives.

    Why can’t we feel good all the time?

    I’ve come to understand that there’s something beyond happiness, something more substantial than a passing emotion.

    It’s the joy of doing what you consider to be important and good. It involves recognizing what really matters to you. It involves gladly losing what is less important.

    It’s living in better alignment with what you value, deep in your heart.

    Does this bring good feelings all the time? No.

    Sometimes it brings stress, as when you have to speak out for what you believe is right even when that’s against the tide. Or when you have to keep going when you’d rather give up. Or when you have to give up when you’d rather keep going.

    Sometimes it brings low moods, as when everything seems to be going wrong. The stock market crashes, you lose a valued assignment, your friend has a misunderstanding with you, you have a raging argument with your partner, your treasured outcomes simply don’t happen, people don’t keep their word to you, or are spiteful to you, and so on.

    Sometimes it brings fear, as when you have to try something you’re not entirely comfortable with or take risks that seem too big. Even the prospect of failure can bring fear.

    Sometimes it brings guilt and shame, as when you do something you deeply regret or fail to keep your word.

    Sometimes it brings self-doubt, as when everyone else is going left and you’re going right in life.

    One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that the more you struggle to avoid difficult feelings, the worse life can get.

    Imagine a great runner. On the track, the runner is invincible. They want to be invincible everywhere.

    Put that same runner in quicksand and they’re in trouble.

    The more they try to run their way out of the quicksand, the deeper they sink.

    The way to cope with quicksand is to stop struggling and lie back. Eventually you’ll be rescued.

    It can be the same with difficult feelings. After a point, they become like quicksand. Struggling with them beyond that point just sucks you in deeper.

    It’s good to reach for pleasant feelings when they’re within easy reach.

    However, when you start beating yourself up for feeling bad, then it’s time to remember quicksand.

    Sometimes it’s better to lie back and float than to try and swim. This means allowing yourself to feel the full range of human emotions.

    This doesn’t mean wallowing in your feelings. It means just letting them be. Not struggling with them.

    You can still do what you consider to be good and important, within your capabilities. That helps take the sting out of difficult feelings.

    That helps bring a profound joy that is beyond fleeting emotions.

    It’s a kinder, gentler, and more fulfilling way of living. It’s great for your wellbeing, especially when life gets difficult.

    Recently our grown-up children joined us for a short family break. We were on a deserted beach. Our son picked up a flat pebble and made it skim the water.

    Soon, we were all competing to see who could get the most bounces.

    I stood back for a moment, watching the scene, and thought to myself: life doesn’t get much better than this.

    I wish I’d known as an unfit and emotionally exhausted forty-year-old what I know as a fit and joyful sixty-year-old. But they say sixty is the new forty. So it’s never too late, or too early, to start living better.

  • Life Is So Ironic…

    Life Is So Ironic…

  • Life Is Too Ironic

    Life Is Too Ironic

  • 6 Questions to Help You Love Yourself More When It Feels Impossible

    6 Questions to Help You Love Yourself More When It Feels Impossible

    Sad painting

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

    In 2012, self-love became the most important thing in my life. After self-loathing and addiction led me to rock bottom, there was nowhere to go but up. When someone asked me last year how long I’d been on the self-love journey, I counted back from 2012. That’s when I thought it began.

    In my old journals, however, I recently found something strange and incredible—my self-love journey started long before I thought it had. Years prior to hitting rock bottom, I’d been having the same epiphanies: I need to love myself, I need to stop trying to get other people to love me, I need to be kinder to myself.

    Yet those epiphanies wouldn’t last. In fact, I habitually forgot about them as I returned to my “normal” back then—anxiety, depression, self-judgment, social anxiety, and a host of addictive behaviors that helped me escape these uncomfortable states.

    Strangely enough, when my suffering was at its worst, few people could have said that self-love was the problem. I had an outward facade of ironclad self-confidence. Most people thought I loved myself too much.

    Yet my journals tell another story. It is a story of not only silent suffering but also accidentally ignoring all my attempts to heal that suffering. Even though I was chronically self-sabotaging, I was also trying to help myself along the way.

    In a Facebook comment to one of my other posts on Tiny Buddha, someone wrote, “A lot of truth in this, but I’m so tired of the thing about loving yourself. Nobody has ever written about how this happens when you don’t feel that way. It sounds so simplistic—just love yourself first. Great, still no answers!!”

    It might be ironic to give an even more simplistic answer to this, such as “Find the answers within you.” But I think it’s important to note that there is a difference between simplicity and ease. The most important lessons in life really are simple—love yourself, find your own answers, know yourself. Yet implementing these lessons is a lifetime job full of tears, fears, and uncertainty.

    The truth is—the answers are within you, just like they were within me. It’s just a matter of discovering them and implementing them consistently.

    Your answers are within your experience. But they aren’t filed into neat folders. They’re scattered in every moment between alarm clocks, worries, and errands. They’re also not labelled by which questions they answer. You might get a bad feeling about something and that could be self-love, but it could also be fear.

    So, instead of answers, I’d like to provide some questions. Your relationship with yourself is unique and your answers will be unique. And the answers will keep changing. You can ask these questions every day, and that wouldn’t be too much.

    1. How can I better understand this experience?

    One sentence that I found frequently written in my old journals was, “Why does this always happen to me?” I said this about periods of depression as much as relationship patterns.

    When I asked this question, I wasn’t looking for an answer. My biggest mental health breakthrough was learning to genuinely ask that question. No, really, why do I always end up alone when I most need people? Why do I sometimes experience overwhelming periods of depression? Thus, I started to learn important things about myself.

    I learned that I had a tendency to never take breaks, strive for perfection, and burn myself into the ground. I also learned that I had a way of pushing people away to “test” if they’d stick around. Seeing these patterns was painful, but much less painful than believing I was broken, unworthy, and doomed to being alone.

    When you’re in the middle of criticizing or judging yourself, take a moment to shift your focus toward understanding.

    Instead of trying to fix your emotions or your reactions, how can you understand them better? What are your feelings trying to communicate to you? How can you acknowledge these messages?

    Instead of beating yourself up for saying or doing something, how can you get a more holistic perspective on your motivations for saying/doing this thing?

    When you make a conscious decision to be more curious about your experience, you will naturally stop resisting, judging, and criticizing it. The more you embrace each moment, the more you will be able to embrace yourself.

    2. Who am I beyond my behaviors, thoughts, and emotions?

    To be able to embrace the ups and downs of life without losing self-love, you must love yourself beyond those ups and downs. This is the difference between self-approval and self-love.

    Approval comes and goes. When you make a mistake, you might disapprove of yourself. This is healthy and normal. If you didn’t experience lulls in self-esteem, you might never learn from your mistakes and end up hurting others.

    Self-love, on the other hand, is something you need in each moment—especially when your self-esteem is low.

    When you don’t approve of your behaviors, ask yourself who you are beyond those behaviors. How can you accept yourself beyond the rollercoaster of day-to-day experience, so that no matter what those experiences are, you continue to think of yourself as worthy of existing?

    3. What do I need right now?

    Each day, ask yourself what you need. Like this, you can begin to nourish yourself. You can also begin to understand some of the side effects that you experience when you don’t meet your needs. Once you feed your hunger, you’ll better understand your symptoms of starvation. This can lead to profound self-forgiveness.

    Especially when you are trying to break bad habits, you can ask which needs you’re trying to meet with those habits.

    Every single self-harming action, even if it hurts you deeply, also serves you in some way. Maybe your unhealthy habits make you feel comfort, control, or even help you gain attention. The need behind each behavior is always valid, but some behaviors are more sustainable and healthy than others. By acknowledging your deeper needs, you can make a plan to consciously meet them in a healthier way.

    One thing I’ve discovered that I need is movement. I have so much energy in my body from day to day. I didn’t realize this for a long time because I expended that energy on chronic anxiety.

    When I realized that I could use my energy to be physically active, my life changed. My anxiety levels plummeted. I formulated a completely different relationship with my body. I also got a new perspective on my long struggle with eating disorders, smoking, and addiction.

    I had a basic need to control my body, to influence my physical state. I still have that need. The only difference is that, now, I’m making conscious choices about how I’m going to meet it.

    4. How can I give myself what I need?

    Once you discover what your needs are, you can begin to anticipate them and fulfill them.

    Simply to acknowledge your desires is half the work (especially if they are different from those of the people around you).

    The other half of the work is asking yourself, every day, how you can meet your needs. The key is to foresee your hunger and feed it before you feel starved. This way, you can avoid relapsing into those desperate self-destructive habits.

    5. How can I acknowledge the needs that I can’t yet meet?

    Let’s say you discover that you need more alone time than you thought. And suppose you discover this while living with four roommates. Chances are, you will not be able to meet this need overnight. However, self-love isn’t a report card on how quickly you’ve fixed your problems. It’s simply the practice of having a kinder relationship with yourself.

    You can acknowledge your frustration and your desires before taking action to address them. You can comfort yourself and assure yourself that you are going to do something about it. Remember how you’ve felt better when other people have reassured you. How can you give that kind of reassurance to yourself?

    6. How can I take responsibility for myself?

    One thing that might interrupt your journey of self-nourishing is waiting for someone or something else to save you.

    You might acknowledge your need for appreciation, but instead of taking action to meet it, you might tell yourself a story about when it will come.

    You might tell yourself to wait until some promotion, accomplishment, or event. Thus, you can lose out on valuable opportunities to love yourself.

    Start to pay attention to which needs you aren’t meeting because you’re putting them into the future or into other people’s hands. And ask yourself how you can begin to meet that need right now by yourself.

    —

    We all long to have someone be attentive to us—to really care about what we’re going through and how to make it better.

    The most beautiful part of learning to ask and answer these questions on a regular basis is this: your longing will finally be fulfilled.

    You do not need to wait for someone to make you feel like you are worth listening to and caring for. Your savior has been waiting in the mirror all along.

  • The Sadness of the Past and the Fear of the Future

    The Sadness of the Past and the Fear of the Future

    The sadness of your past

  • Life Is a Cycle of Happiness, Sadness, Clarity, and Confusion

    Life Is a Cycle of Happiness, Sadness, Clarity, and Confusion

    Woman Looking Up to the Sky

    “Life is a cycle, always in motion. If good times have moved on, so will times of trouble.” ~Indian Proverb

    Two years ago I went on a volunteer trip to Vietnam, where I had hoped to find both myself and my purpose (ambitious), but instead found a rocky adventure that continues to teach me things to this day.

    I was in the middle of a difficult time that was secretly a rebirth. It’s always hard to see that when it’s happening, isn’t it?

    For a few amazing months, everything made crystal clear sense, and I felt like I could see through all realms of existence to the truth. I started listening to my body and my spirit rather than my brain. Life opened up to me.

    I uncovered a deep interest in the healing power of art, especially dance and movement. I realized said interest was embedded in who I’ve been all along, I just had to take a minute to listen and let it show itself.

    I have been a dancer all of my life, and somewhere along the way forgot that the reason I started dancing was because it allowed for joyful, authentic expression.

    Three-year-old Laura knew that. I got older and forgot—I got wrapped up in doing, in trying to be the best, in comparing myself to others, in pushing myself and my body beyond what was loving.

    I believe art is essentially a spiritual practice—any art. But, being humans (oh, humans), it’s easy to get wrapped up in the more worldly aspects of art. I’m talking recognition, fame, money, perfection, applause, all that.

    That’s cool, it happens. But what my soul really wanted to do was dance and sing around my apartment and figure out how my body wanted to move when it wasn’t being told what was “good” and what was “bad.”

    I could go on forever about this. I’ll spare you. But I implore you, make your art. Just make it, simply because it allows you to express who you are.

    You don’t have to make a big stink out of it with performances and shows. You can if that feels right. But if you don’t want to show your art to anyone and want to just create for the sake of creating, that has enormous value and is, indeed, enough.

    I started doing dance improvisations in my apartment regularly. I began going to auditions less and going to Central Park to be with nature and read about healing arts more.

    I have practiced Pilates for years to take care of dance-related injuries, and a little voice inside said, “Hey, what about teaching Pilates?”

    I said, “Alright, what the heck, let’s see.”

    I started my certification off with a full scholarship to a mat training program at a studio that welcomed me with open arms. If that’s not a nudge toward something, I don’t know what is.

    I met an amazing man approximately five days after declaring, “Okay, Laura! We are not worrying about men anymore! I am going to focus on what I am doing, and worry about that later.”

    Before meeting him, I told him flat out, “I’m not looking for a boyfriend right now,” and of course, that’s when your person waltzes right into your life. Our first year together flew by.

    I felt my heart opening up. I felt like I was expanding and moving into a different time of my life, a more authentic expression of who I am. I honored my intuition as best as I could, and it served me well. I was crazy happy. Like, hard to sleep happy.

    I remembered that I had options and choices—what an incredible blessing. I did not have to keep doing the same thing I had been pursuing for years. I was free to let other, unexplored parts of myself out into the world. This was exciting and relieving.

    I simultaneously felt like I had control and that, in fact, I didn’t need to have control, because reality was showing me the way.

    I even went to Vietnam a second time and visited the same village I taught in the year before. This time I had a cute and supportive travel companion, as well as a heck of a lot of perspective. I felt like a different version of myself, although essentially the same. (I still got hangry and coped pretty badly with jet lag…)

    And then, you know what happened? I got kind of confused again. A few months after the clarity burst, I started questioning again: “What am I doing? What should I do?” And then things were clear again. And then I was confused. And on and on. Sometimes life felt magical and sometimes it didn’t,

    Sometimes things make sense and then they don’t make sense again. It’s a spiral.

    We circle around to similar lessons, feelings, and challenges, but we experience them at different levels of awareness. And we keep hitting the same challenges until we learn the lessons we need to in order to let go and grow. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

    And it also seems that we can learn a lesson, let something go, and then later on forget we learned the lesson and need to do it again. You know what I mean?

    For my twenty-seventh birthday in June, I went out of my comfort zone to a hippie farm up in the Berkshires. I’m talking barefoot, vegan, everyone dancing all the time in the grass. It was pretty amazing, but for this city girl, at first it was a lot.

    I spent the week on retreat working through Anna Halprin’s life/art healing process. A year before, I read (more like devoured) her book Dance as a Healing Art during my daily trips to Central Park.

    The book was one of the first I read during my period of magic. It was very cool to be in the mountains a year later doing the work myself. We danced, wrote, sang, drew, cried, laughed, and supported each other through our individual journeys of self-discovery and healing.

    I met some amazing people that I felt deep connections with very quickly. I was skeptical at first, but I did my best to trust the process, and the results were pretty astounding.

    One of the last days of the workshop was my actual birthday. I gathered the resources I had created over the week—my writing, drawings, notes, and dances—and saw a message in all of them.

    Ultimately, what my heart was saying was “Go deep into yourself and just be.” That was an interesting message, because I came there looking for answers about what to do.

    For a week after that workshop was over, I felt like I had expanded, just as I had felt the year before when all the magic was happening, but this time on a deeper level. I felt like I was high. (I wasn’t, I swear).

    I felt so secure, so calm, so content just to be—happy sipping tea with my man across from me, happy walking through trees in the rain, happy watching the sky. It was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had, and it all came from being.

    Since I’ve been back, I’ve settled back into my humanity, meaning, sometimes I feel grounded and free and other times I feel confused and irritable. I’m getting the impression that this cycle is kind of the way it is, and part of the human experience. Perhaps the cycle is the human experience.

    We are in constant motion and everything changes, but this doesn’t have to be scary (even though it is).

    Actually, it can be amazingly freeing, because in moments of loneliness or confusion, you can trust that there will also be moments of deep love, connection, and clarity.

    Dance the dance, sing the song, write the story, draw the shapes, and embody who you are.

    One of my all time favorite quotes is “Joy is the other side of sadness,” which I heard Sharon Salzberg say at Tibet House in NYC almost ten years ago, when I first discovered meditation.

    I say this frequently to people who feel guilty or worried about not feeling happy. Joy is not just feeling happy and clear. Joy is also feeling sad and confused with an open heart.

    Perhaps the universe lines things up for you in lightening moments of clarity as encouragement, a gesture of unconditional love. But then it pulls away and leaves you to navigate on your own, to wrestle with the uncertainties and take leaps of faith into unchartered territory.

    Discovery isn’t nearly as rewarding, beautiful, and profound if you know the exact path to getting there. Up and down, round and round, we keep going, getting closer and closer to who we are.

  • How We Avoid Our Feelings and How Embracing Them Sets Us Free

    How We Avoid Our Feelings and How Embracing Them Sets Us Free

    Eyes

    “We numb our minds and heart so one need not be broken and the other need not be bothered.” ~Peggy Haymes

    Feelings are important, no doubt about it. They communicate all sorts of information to us. I don’t know about you, but I’ve preferred to ignore some of that information. Raise your hand if you would much rather feel the good feelings and just jump right over the not so good ones.

    Okay, so it’s unanimous. We all prefer the good, happy feelings. I expect we are all experts at finding ways to avoid the uncomfortable ones. But maybe we can share some avoidance techniques and try something new.

    I like to eat. Food has been synonymous with love in my world. It comforts… until it doesn’t, right? Alcohol? Well, thank heaven I was spared addiction, because, but for the grace of God, there go I.

    Running and exercise were at least a healthier alternative to dealing with my feelings, and I did feel a little better about myself, so that was justifiable, I’m sure. Oh, and let’s not forget a good movie, or even a bad one is a great distractor. Binge watching is even better.

    So, let’s add to the list. What do you do to avoid those uncomfortable feelings? Just take a minute to think about it. What are your avoidance techniques? Okay, time is up.

    Do you shop for stuff you do not need?

    Are you constantly on the go?

    Do you peruse social media incessantly, call or text anyone available?

    Do you eat, drink, and be merry?

    Spend more time with Match.com than you do with yourself?

    Do you clean your house, obsessively making sure everything is in its place?

    Lose yourself in a book?

    Surround yourself with so much chaos that you can hardly hear yourself think?

    Or maybe you avoid certain places or people or being alone.

    Do you work long hours?

    Get a front row seat into the life of someone that appears messier than you?

    The list could go on and on. So, pick your favorites and have at it.

    But before you do, I have to tell you that, in hindsight, I was one of the lucky ones.

    I was lucky because I could not keep avoiding those uncomfortable feelings, no matter how hard I tried or what avoidance technique I used. They were like a bad penny that kept showing up.

    If you want to know how that made me lucky, read on. If you prefer to just add some avoidance techniques to what you are already doing, then you can stop reading now.

    So, why was I lucky?

    Because, you see, my feelings ended up being my North Star to the life I wanted.

    First, some education: Feelings, and the emotions that go with them, like absolutely everything else in life, are energy. Energy, by its very nature, has to keep moving. Unfortunately, too many of us learned, at a rather young age, to stuff feelings down deep. Until expressed, those feelings still live on in our bodies.

    We often stuff them so deeply that we don’t necessarily know they exist, unless we are paying attention. Whether you recognize it or not, I assure you those feelings are still having a profound impact on your life. They follow you around in your relationships and in your interactions with yourself and others.

    Your feelings don’t keep you from being all that you can be. They don’t keep you from getting what you want. Your avoidance of them does.

    They show up in the tweak you feel inside when someone says something you don’t like. Or when the voice in your head is saying something different from what is actually coming out of your mouth.

    Maybe they make themselves known when you are driving in traffic or when your child is not obedient.

    How about when your spouse doesn’t help around the house the way you want or when your friends let you down?

    Maybe it shows up in the jealousy or envy you feel for others.

    And let’s not forget the way we tolerate inappropriate behaviors from others.

    The invitation can be subtle. Listen for it. Watch for it. It is always beckoning.

    Feelings left unresolved in our bodies result in dis-ease—mental, physical, and spiritual.

    At some point in my life, despite running, literally and figuratively, the feelings I was trying so desperately to avoid caught up with me.

    I had been running from feelings left over from childhood. I was angry. I was sad. I felt unloved. My self-worth was in the toilet. I tried not to notice.

    Having never learned my value, I unknowingly invited further abuse in my twenties. Running helped me deal with the emotional energy and irritability without my processing the feelings in ways that would permit resolution. In fact, I did not know feelings could be resolved. I thought, “I guess I will always feel this way.” I was wrong. Thank God I was wrong!

    So now, like one of those 5k races, I had run out of steam and I could not outrun my pursuer. So, unable to avoid any longer, I instead began to befriend those difficult feelings. Admittedly, I begrudgingly befriended those feelings, but befriend them I did.

    And I am forever grateful for having done so.

    I learned to be present to my own pain.

    Life is a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Many of us have experienced some degree of childhood abuse, bullying, neglect, or trauma. The truth is, even in the best of circumstances, we have painful experiences and loss.

    As kids we were powerless. We were dependent on the adults in our lives, unable to fend for ourselves. That left us pretty vulnerable to our environment. As kids we were also pretty ingenious, finding phenomenal ways to defend against situations and feelings we could not handle.

    I became an extension of my dad, trying to be as agreeable and as like him as possible. If Dad was happy, I was better off.

    The problem is, I became the agreeable one in my adult relationships, denying the essence of who I was. I was taking care of the people around me better than I was taking care of myself. I hid who I was assuming it was not acceptable, since in childhood, it was not. What worked in helping me survive childhood ceased to serve its purpose in my adult relationships.

    In fact, those survival skills impede us from being whole, accomplishing our dreams, and having the healthy, intimate relationships we actually want. Unresolved feelings can leave us feeling depressed, anxious, physically sick, and any other number of symptoms. I had them all.

    I remember sitting in my family room one day, thinking. I probably don’t have to tell you how dangerous thinking can be! It’s one of the things we are often trying to avoid. I sure was. The next thing I knew, I was wiping down an already clean kitchen counter. As I regained consciousness from my obvious lapse, a light bulb came on.

    I realized that I did not like what I was thinking about, because it made me feel something I had no interest in feeling.

    Without any conscious awareness, I had gotten up and moved to the kitchen. Now, having woken up from my sleepwalking, I said to myself, “I keep moving to avoid my feelings.”

    Bingo!

    That awareness was a turning point for me, as I began to pay closer attention to the ways that I was avoiding myself, my thoughts, and my feelings.

    As a result of my newfound awareness, another light bulb moment happened one day while driving. I was entering the highway from a two-lane ramp, when a huge dump truck decided to cut over in front of me. I, having little choice, hit my brakes; otherwise, I would have hit him. Man, was I ticked!

    This was not a new experience for me. Trucks cutting me off always left me angry. That was the invitation. I had ignored it long enough. This time I was paying attention.

    Having a history of being pushed around by men, I had learned to be very quiet and compliant, in my attempts to avoid their wrath. Their unresolved anger was taken out on me and being smaller and weaker, I had little choice but to endure.

    Those unresolved feelings still festered inside, and every time a vehicle bigger than me “pushed” me into another lane or forced me to relinquish my right, those feelings got triggered.

    Now, I had something to work with. I needed to be angry. I needed to be sad and I needed to cry. I also needed to feel the powerlessness that had been mine.  

    This was just one of many aha moments I had on this journey of self-discovery. Feelings of anger, grief, sadness, and loss showed up in so many ways and for so many reasons. I finally allowed them to express themselves.

    So, yes, I was lucky. I could not avoid my feelings any longer.

    Through this process, I began to get more comfortable with the pain. It ebbed and flowed like the tides. I found the support I needed and could trust. This is not something we can often do alone.

    I chose to take myself to a psychotherapist, and that turned out to be one of the best things that I ever did for myself. “When the student is ready, the teacher will come.”

    I also began to deal with my self-esteem issues. My inner voice was harsh and judgmental. My feelings about myself were pretty hateful. Each feeling led to the next, taking me deeper into my own experience, and like the proverbial onion, I peeled it back.

    I was being invited to heal. And heal I did. Had I not gone through it myself, I would not have believed that my own transformation could take place in the way that it did. I was made new.

    Learning to sit with my feelings freed me from the need to live in avoidance mode day in and day out. I was no longer fearful. I was better able to go with the flow of life.

    As feelings showed up, I processed them by giving them voice and expression. They were leading me somewhere, and although I was not certain of the destination, I began to trust them.

    As the old feelings began to find their rest, I began to feel better. I was less depressed and less anxious, until I was neither. I enjoyed myself more. My relationships began to be easier. I was more comfortable in my own skin.

    Weeding through those difficult feelings was not easy, but neither was the way I had been living my life previous to having them. I had been afraid to speak up. I had been afraid of being ridiculed. I didn’t like myself. I was more uncomfortable than not. My relationships were distant and disconnected. I was living beneath my potential.

    The avoidance of those feelings controlled my life in more ways than I had been aware.

    We all avoid; it is human nature. We are afraid of the unknown. We are afraid we will collapse and never get up again. We are afraid of spiraling out of control. We are afraid of what change means. We are afraid of what others will think. We are afraid of so many things. And so we avoid.

    We tell ourselves, “It was in the past” or “It happened so long ago.” And lets not forget the “shoulds”: “I should be over this.” “I should let this go.”

    People would tell me, “Let it go.” I would think, “Don’t you think I would if I could?”

    People would say, “Get over it.” I would wonder, “How do I do that?”

    I would think of the people who hurt me, “They did the best they could. What’s wrong with me?”

    I realize now that those telling me to “let it go” or “get over it” were not dealing with their own feelings. And telling myself, “They did the best they could” may be true, but it did not eliminate the fact that what they did hurt me. It was just another way for me to avoid the hurt.

    There was nothing wrong with me. My feelings were about me. No one else. It wasn’t about blame. It was about acknowledging myself and listening to my pain.

    Unexpectedly, I began to trust myself. I learned what it meant to take care of myself and to follow my heart. I made myself a priority. I finally understood what it meant to “let go,” and I could. I made peace with my past, began to enjoy the present, and started to look forward to the future. I was excited about the possibilities.

    Don’t let anyone else tell you how it is. Don’t wait for someone else to make it okay for you to do what you need to do. Don’t minimize your own experience.

    I want to invite you to wake up. Dig in. Lean in.

    Know yourself, understand yourself, learn to love yourself. Pay attention. There are buzzwords like meditation, mindfulness, and self-awareness. Pick one and put it into practice.

    It’s okay to be scared and uncertain. It’s okay to find the support you need. Be your own best friend. Let those feelings have their day. Release them from your body. It will change your life in ways you cannot even imagine.

    You deserve to be free. You will be amazed at your own transformation. You deserve to have all that your heart desires. Can you hear it calling you?

  • Why The Old Adage “Enjoy Every Moment” May Be More Harmful Than Helpful

    Why The Old Adage “Enjoy Every Moment” May Be More Harmful Than Helpful

    “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” ~Francis Bacon

    One phrase my husband and I have heard often since becoming new parents—heck, since I was still waddling my way through my last trimester—is, “It goes so fast.” This is most often delivered by another more seasoned mother with an all-knowing shake of her head and a longing gaze at my once rotund belly, or now at our beautiful boy.

    We smile and nod, silently agreeing to the harsh reality of time. Which inevitably leads to the dreaded follow up, “Enjoy every moment!” This is usually spoken at a higher, more fervent, almost frantic timber as she smiles hugely at us.

    The thing is, I know she means well. I know that her child(ren) must be older and that she has undoubtedly forgotten the reality of the many difficulties with which new parents are faced as they begin to navigate the oftentimes muddy waters of raising a child.

    I also now know that because of the prevalence of phrases like, “Enjoy every moment,” many new parents are unable to reconcile the very real conflicting emotions of loving their children so much that at times it is hard to breathe, while at the same time feeling for any myriad of reasons like they don’t measure up. Or that because they aren’t, in fact, enjoying every minute, that they must somehow be failing as a parent and a person.

    A couple of months before my son was born I bumped into a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while. The typical conversation between a fairly new mother and woman in late stage pregnancy ensued.

    We discussed how I was feeling; she made a fleeting comment about her back labor, encouraging me to be open-minded about any birth plan I might have in place; and then she said something so outlandish and foreign that I couldn’t in that moment find the words with which to respond.

    She told me, with great certainty, that there would be things I would endure in the very near future that would be almost incomprehensibly difficult, and that in no way would I enjoy them all.

    I was stunned. But it wasn’t that she spoke the truth that stunned me; it was that everyone else I had come into contact with hadn’t.

    In that moment, I was more grateful to her than she’ll ever know. Right there, at the entrance to the grocery store, she granted me permission to honestly experience all that lie ahead on the bumpy, blissful path of motherhood.

    Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. At least not in those first few months when every cry my son emitted from his frighteningly fragile little body left me panic-stricken and absolutely sure that I was simply not cut out to be a mother.

    Not because I wasn’t doing every possible thing in my power to care for and nurture my boy. But because there is nothing enjoyable about massive hormonal shifts, staggering sleep deprivation, unexpected postpartum anxiety, and three bouts of excruciating mastitis.

    It wasn’t until my husband—bless his kind and patient heart—asked me, after one agonizingly long and sleepless night, what I had expected life with a newborn to be that I remembered my friend’s wise, and let’s face it, frightening words.

    I realized then my perception of what my experience as a new mother should be had become quite skewed. I also realized that it was thanks to all those well-meaning, “Enjoy every moment” comments that I found myself floundering to make sense of just how I was supposed to manage to do that—and if I was unable to, then surely there must be something inherently wrong with me.

    Maybe you think I’m being too literal. Surely everyone knows you can’t possibly enjoy every moment.

    Okay sure, I’ll give you that. But I’ll also argue that our words and thoughts carry great weight. And with that weight often comes unrealistic expectations, both of ourselves and of others. This is true for all of us in any given situation, parent or not.

    Plus, I think the issue runs deeper than simple semantics. Let’s face it, most of us have spent a large majority of our lives constructing often intricate and elaborate means of avoiding pain and discomfort.

    We go well out of our way to escape those pesky emotions that leave us feeling vulnerable. We choose, instead, to focus only on what we, and society as a whole, has deemed “good” or “positive” rather than risk putting our more “negative” thoughts and experiences out into the universe. You’ve heard this, right?

    While I am a staunch believer in the power we have to manifest and create our own reality, I am also convinced that we cannot simply bypass the harder, more uncomfortable aspects of the human experience.

    It is not surprising then, that it has been in my new role as both an ecstatic and scared new mother that I have found there is absolutely no place in which to escape from anything. After all, my child’s cries of discomfort and/or discontent cannot, in any language or universe, be denied. And this, I have found, is a good thing. It literally keeps him alive.

    Well, we were all babies once. Maybe there is a trace of that survival instinct still hibernating within each of us. Maybe our own fears and discomforts are coming up when necessary as a way to keep us alive, too. Or at the very least, to wake us up.

    During the first six euphoric and arduous months of my son’s life, I began to awaken to the paradox of my new situation.

    I had been granted the greatest gift I will ever receive in this life. It’s true. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Yet it is because of that very greatness that I was unable to allow for the intense feelings of discomfort I felt when faced with the very natural sense of overwhelm that comes with being a new mother.

    I, like many others in any number of life’s scenarios, believed that I had no right to feel the tough stuff when I was so obviously blessed with such a massive amount of good.

    But just as I believe we need the darkness to appreciate the light, I am also certain that I needed—and must continue—to allow myself to fully surrender to and move through those harder, oh so unenjoyable moments. For it was and is in the moments when I have thought I had nothing left to give that I learned just how good a mother I actually am.

    I have learned, time and again, the lengths I will go to for my son. I have abolished the limitations I unknowingly set for myself simply by being faced with staggeringly hard situations and circumstances.

    Ironically, It is because of these situations that I now trust myself and my capabilities more than ever before.

    It’s unreasonable to think we should enjoy every moment, and that if we don’t, we’re doing something wrong. So let yourself off the hook. You never know, it just might result in you enjoying life’s messy process and all the glorious moments in between that much more.

  • 100 Reasons to be Grateful Today

    100 Reasons to be Grateful Today

    Be grateful

    “Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.” ~Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

    I began my gratitude practice at a time when I desperately needed help seeing the good in my life.

    Several failed relationships and a broken heart had left me blind to the incredible gifts the Universe had given me, and I was rutted in depression for three years. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything besides what I had lost. Happiness seemed like a cosmic joke.

    The more I focused on what I wasn’t grateful for, like the love I had lost, the less I focused on doing the things I loved.

    Depression is common, and it happens to many of us at some point. But the longer I chose to wallow in it, the more impossible happiness seemed. After my third year of depression I seriously considered whether life was even worth living.

    Then I came across Zig Ziglar’s empowering audiobook A View From the Top.

    I learned from Zig how giving to others can help us foster a deep sense of happiness, and how gratitude is the missing ingredient to most people’s success.

    Immediately, I began a gratitude practice, focusing on the important people in my life and the many gifts I had to share with others.

    It was a tough transition because there was so much negative momentum to reverse. Habits are like roads—the more you travel them, the easier they are to follow. But I stayed disciplined with my new habit and chose grateful thoughts even when I felt hopeless.

    Within two years my gratitude practice turned into a lifestyle, and today I’m enjoying the fruits.

    I make a living doing what I love as a writer, and I make a difference in the lives of thousands of people through my work—all because I shifted my focus from what I lacked to what I had.

    The amazing thing is that no matter how much or little I think I have, I always have more! And gratitude helps me see it.

    If you’ve felt gypped by the Universe, here are 100 reasons to be grateful today.

    1. The breath in your lungs

    2. Your hard-working heart

    3. The food that fuels your experience

    4. The ever-present opportunity to make better decisions than your last

    5. Your brain and memory that allow you to learn from mistakes

    6. The freedom to make unlimited mistakes on your road to self-improvement

    7. The endless supply of wisdom people and books provide

    8. The natural talents you were born to share

    9. The challenges that allow you to grow

    10. The accomplishments that have improved your life

    11. The mother and father who gave you life

    12. The Internet

    13. Humor

    14. Sweet doggy friends, or cats, if you’re that kind of person

    15. Warm sun on your skin

    16. The beauty and life in nature

    17. The senses that allow you to experience beauty

    18. Clean drinking water

    19. Health in any amount

    20. The arms, legs, feet, and hands that give you freedom of movement

    21. The favorite song that keeps you going when you feel like giving up

    22. The artists who struggle to create beauty for others

    23. The gift of language

    24. The ability to read

    25. The ability to learn from the mistakes and achievements of others

    26. The help that is always there when you ask for it

    27. The roof over your head

    28. Piercing stars in a clear night sky

    29. The inspiration that sweeps you out of your comfort zone

    30. The people who’ve dedicated their lives to inspiring others

    31. The kids who remind you to be playful and adventurous

    32. The ability to connect with family and friends anywhere in the world (Skype)

    33. Carrots (If you don’t know about carrots, click this link)

    34. Family farms that are committed to providing organic and sustainable foods

    35. The fresh start you’re given every day

    36. Rain

    37. Hope

    38. The pain that reminds you of the need to change

    39. Our dreams

    40. The people who pray for you every day, without you realizing it

    41. The hard times that made you who you are

    42. Automatic rice cookers, refrigerators, air conditioning, and every little convenience that saves you time

    43. Bare feet on grass

    44. All the organisms in the soil that support life on earth

    45. Electricity

    46. All of the amazing teachers who helped you reach your potential

    47. Each failure that led to your achievements, and everyone who encouraged you to keep going

    48. The “haters” who helped you build resilience by saying, “No, you can’t!”

    49. The fact that every bit of food you need to be happy and healthy is just a short drive away

    50. The garbage men who keep streets clean

    51. The random smile that got you through your last impossible day

    52. That one cashier who you can always count on to brighten your day

    53. Photosynthesis, and the fact that nature’s beauty works to keep you alive

    54. The one friend you’ve been able to count on through every stage in your life—even if that friend is you

    55. The new friends you’ve yet to meet, and the amazing times you haven’t yet experienced

    56. Your favorite spot to recharge when you’re overwhelmed

    57. Sunsets that make the sky explode with incandescent pinks, peaches, purples, oranges, and golds

    58. Your education

    59. Every single one of the trillions of cells in your body that work hard so that you can experience life

    60. That one mule of a person who challenges you to be kind when it’s most difficult

    61. Grandmas and Grandpas who helped make childhood so special

    62. The special people who filled spots where parents or grandparents were missing

    63. Bananas and peanut butter (or your favorite treat)

    64. Fresh baked baguettes that are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside (and other delicious food)

    65. The spiritual growth you’ve accomplished (give yourself some credit!)

    66. The renewal of spring

    67. The relaxing sound of trickling water

    68. Gardens with fresh herbs, even if they’re just on your window sill

    69. YouTube, for whenever you need to troubleshoot your car or computer, and especially when you need a laugh.

    70. All the quotes that inspire you

    71. Good cheese, and underrated philosophers

    72. The doors that closed on opportunities you wanted but didn’t need

    73. The windows that opened when you almost gave up hope

    74. All the serendipitous occasions that remind you never to lose faith

    75. Everything coconut-related: oil, water, ice cream, flour, cream pie, etc.

    76. The hardships that transform us into more capable, understanding, giving, and forgiving people

    77. The impossible, for inspiring us to expand our limits

    78. The hot showers that completely change your perspective on life

    79. Gluten-free bread that doesn’t suck

    80. Hearing good news

    81. Making good news for others to hear

    82. The little depressions that remind you to fight hard for happiness

    83. The anxiety that reminds you to feel your emotions so you can learn from them and let them go

    84. The fact that you are unconditionally loved and accepted

    85. A really good cry

    86. Sex

    87. New life

    88. Beautiful men and women (look in the mirror)

    89. The rituals that give security and meaning to daily life

    90. Your favorite things

    91. The ridiculous people you can always count on for a belly laugh

    92. Little touches from people you love that make everything okay

    93. Little munchkins who you can never be with quite enough

    94. The good examples who’ve inspired you to be your best

    95. The bad examples who illuminated the paths you shouldn’t take

    96. The movies, music, art, celebrations, and people that remind you just how good it is to be human

    97. The you from yesterday you get to compete with today

    98. Refreshing walks that calm your mind and ease your spirit

    99. The ability to change your whole life with one good decision

    100. The option to be grateful no matter where you are or what you’re experiencing

    —

    Gratitude is the most important choice in your day—and you can find things to be grateful for everywhere if you look hard enough. If you liked this list, try making your own at the end of each week and put it in a gratitude journal. Your life will effloresce, I promise.

  • The Good News About Feeling Bad (And How to Get Through It)

    The Good News About Feeling Bad (And How to Get Through It)

    “To honor and accept one’s shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It’s whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.” ~Robert Johnson

    There’s nothing worse than having a bad day (or week or years…)

    Or when emotions take over and carry us away.

    Or when our relationships bring challenges.

    Or when we endure great loss.

    Or when we wish that just once when things started getting good, they stayed that way.

    But difficult times are really offerings that show us what no longer serves us. And once they’re cleared, they no longer have power over us.

    No one, including myself, wants to feel bad. After decades of trying to overcome depression and anxiety, one day, I finally stopped trying to fix myself. I then came to the amazing realization that there’s really no problem with me.

    This is what set me free:

    Several years ago, my parents both died of cancer, I had many miscarriages, my husband and I divorced, and my dog of sixteen years had to be put down.

    It was intensely difficult, and I fell apart. I hardly recognized myself. At the same time, even in my darkest hour, I knew in my gut that I would somehow get through it.

    In the midst of my mid-life crises, wondering when and how I would get over the debilitating, soul-crushing loss, I trusted myself not completely, but enough. 

    During that time, I made a new friend whose father had recently passed. I invited him over for a bowl of my famous Italian chicken sausage lentil soup.

    He was angry and confused. He was in shock. I picked up my soup in the palms of my hands and said to him, “Grief is a big bowl to hold.”

    At any given time, without knowing why or how, grief can overcome us in a number of aching expressions.

    We get super pissed off. Or we want to hide. Or we push away those we love, and wall off. We want to numb the pain. Or cover it up.

    Seemingly insignificant annoyances trigger us. Perhaps a token, memory, or random happenstance wells us up.

    We all mourn in different ways, wanting more than anything for it all to end. And we sometimes pretend that it’s over when it’s not.

    Someone once told me that there is grief and frozen grief.

    Frozen grief is grief that got stuck like water passing from a liquid to a solid state—a cohesion of molecules holding together, resisting separation. Like a Coke in a freezer, it can burst.

    Warmth and equilibrium are what’s needed to nurture it. But there’s not a single temperature that can be considered to be the melting point of water.

    I read once that after suffering a great loss, it takes two years to heal—or at least have a sense that the trauma is now of the past, even if not “over.”

    At two years, I was doing better but I still wasn’t great. I worried then I was frozen.

    Cheryl Strayed wrote in Brave Enough:

    “When you recognize that you will thrive not in spite of your losses and sorrows, but because of them, that you would not have chosen the things that happen in your life, but you are grateful for them, that you will hold the empty bowls eternally in your hands, but you also have the capacity to fill them? The word for that is healing.”

    Cheryl Strayed knew about the bowl too.

    It took four years, and then one day, I saw the clouds disperse and the sun rise. I was frustrated it wasn’t two. It was four. But that’s how long it took me.

    In the grand scheme of things I can look back now and see all that I learned and how I grew. In my most broken hideous moments the most magical thing happened.

    I came to love my big, beautiful, messy self. I came to accept her like nothing else.

    As much as I missed my mother and father, the husband I loved, the babies I didn’t have, and the dog that replaced them, I came to a place of loving myself like my own parent, my own spouse, and my own child.

    I was all that was left. And if that was it, then by God I was going to love her.

    And what did loving myself really mean?

    It meant accepting myself enough to allow myself to be a mess.

    To not apologize 100 times for every single mistake, or kill myself over them.

    To humbly say to others and myself, this is it.

    And then, somehow, I started to accept others like myself. They got to be messes too. And my heart opened. And I could love again. And I let love into my big, beautiful bowl of lentil soup.

    Here are some tools to help you love yourself as you feel all that you’re feeling—the good and the bad.

    1. Accept feelings without judgment.

    Use this question:

    What if it didn’t matter if I felt ________ or not?

    Then, fill in the blank with whatever you’re judging yourself for. Give yourself permission to feel whatever it is.

    Let it be, without doing anything with it or trying to make sense of it, while holding a loving container for yourself and the people around it.

    2. When an emotion is carrying you away, identify the feeling by narrowing it down to one of these:

    • Anger
    • Fear
    • Sadness/Grief
    • Joy/Loving

    Our feelings are layered. Underneath anger is fear, under fear is sadness, and under sadness is our heart, where our joy and loving lies. 

    This formula can guide you in uncovering each of your emotional experiences to come to your heart more quickly.

    For example, after my mother died I was angry. I didn’t know why I felt so angry until I cleared through the layers.

    I discovered I was mad that she left me. But the anger wouldn’t have subsided until I identified the fear underneath it: I was terrified of living life without my mom, and I was shutting down my vulnerable feelings to protect myself.

    Of course, under the fear was tremendous sadness that she was gone. In order to heal, I needed to feel the tears rather than suppress them with anger and fear.

    Once I could touch the tender, fragile parts inside, my tears had permission to flow out whenever necessary.

    When my tears emptied, the sadness lifted and was replaced with enormous love, compassion, and gratitude for my mom. When I thought about her it didn’t come with pain anymore. I think of her now only with happiness and joy.

    3. Realize that spirals both descend and ascend.

    When we hit a particularly difficult downward spiral, we have the opportunity to focus on raising our frequency.

    In these times, I meditate more. I choose not to fuel the negativity by talking too much about it with friends. I clean up my diet. I go to yoga—whatever I can do to make a positive adjustment toward self-loving and self-care.

    I find something to ground me. It could be as easy as taking the garbage out (literally!), jumping into a creative project that fulfills me, or taking a walk in the sunshine—anything to find the scent of the roses.

    4. Know that after good experiences, “bad” things will happen.

    After expansion, we always contract. And that means nothing about us.

    Life brings us lemons so that we can discover how to go deeper and closer to our true selves. Once we’ve hit one level, there’s always another.

    We can have some good days where everything is great, and then WHOA, something steps in that challenges us to grow.

    I’ve come to accept that I will eventually lose momentum after being in the flow.

    The good news about feeling bad is that when we get thrown off course, each letdown strengthens our spirit when we find our way out.

    “Downtimes” are our ally. Without “bad,” “good” wouldn’t exist, and just like life, we learn to roll with it. What’s most important is how we acknowledge and validate our being human as truly enough.

  • Good Times Are on the Way

    Good Times Are on the Way

    Good Times Are on the Way

    Source: SimpleReminders.com

  • 4 Things to Remember When Your Relationship Falls Apart

    4 Things to Remember When Your Relationship Falls Apart

    Lonely

    “At some point you have to realize that some people can stay in your heart, but not in your life.” ~Unknown

    I was filled with excitement and nerves as I stood waiting to meet him for the first time in Paddington station.

    It was one of the wettest days I’d seen in London, and the rain dripped steadily from the peaked hood of my blue rain jacket. Zipped up to my chin and the hood pulled tight over my head, only my eyes peered out, searching for him amongst the crowds and falling rain.

    Months later, he told me that he’d fallen in love with me the moment he saw me, those big eyes staring out at him from beneath my hood.

    We’d been introduced on Facebook via a mutual friend after I’d commented on how cute he was. He lived in California. I lived in London. He’d quit his job to travel for a year and was passing through the city. He asked if I wanted to meet.

    I said yes.

    But in the same moment that he fell in love with me at the station, my excitement faded away. What I’d hoped to feel when we finally met just wasn’t there.

    Over the next few months, from wherever he traveled, he pursued me with a persistence I’d never known.

    At first, I was annoyed. I wished he’d leave me be.

    But as the weeks and months went by, things started to change. He wanted to know everything about me. He was interested. Interested in a way no one else had been before. He took time to get to know me. And I started to get to know him too.

    I realized that I’d judged him too soon.

    When he returned to California, we spent the next few months talking online almost every day. With every question he asked, I started to love him a little bit more.

    Eventually, we talked about meeting again, this time in California, to see where this all might lead.

    And so three months ago I boarded a plane at London Heathrow to meet this man who I’d begun to love.

    We spent the next three months on one long adventure. It was filled with road trips, hiking, forest trails, gentle kisses, holding hands, the wind in our hair, the sun on our cheeks and the smell of California all around us.

    We argued, too.

    But it was perfect.

    And yet when those three months came to a close, we both acknowledged the unhappy reality that we were two people traveling in two very different life directions. We both felt that continuing our journey together would mean neither of us would ever quite be truly content.

    And so my grieving began. A sort of grieving I’ve not experienced before. Because here was a man I loved. And yet I also knew that we weren’t meant to be.

    The last few weeks have been filled with a great deal of sadness, confusion, and questioning, as well as gratitude and happiness for the time we spent together.

    I don’t think there’s a person amongst us who has escaped heartbreak in this thing we call life. And so amongst all this, I wanted to share a few thoughts on love and life. It’s helped me to write this down. I hope it might help you too.

    Leave nothing on the table.

    In our final week together, we watched a film called Miracle, the true story of Herb Brooks (Russell), the player-turned-coach who led the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to victory over the seemingly invincible Russian squad.

    There’s a moment in the film when Herb turns to his wife and says:

    “The important thing is that those twenty boys know that in twenty years they didn’t leave anything on the table. They played their hearts out. That’s the important thing.”

    And that is the important thing.

    I could have said no to this experience. I could have told myself about all the ways in which it could end in disaster and heartbreak. I could have stayed in London.

    But then where would we be?

    Two people who left everything on the table. Two people who refused to play their hearts out.

    And while these endings bring pain, I never want to live my life not playing my heart out. I don’t think anyone should live that way. Not in business. Not in love. Not in life.

    So keep opening up.

    Keep playing your heart out.

    Leave nothing on the table.

    You are lovable.

    Right now, one of the things I’m really having to fight is the stories my mind is trying to create. Stories like:

    • You’re not lovable.
    • You’ll be alone forever.

    In times of pain and vulnerability, the brain searches for stories to make sense of what’s happened. Oftentimes, we come up with stories that aren’t based in truth. But our brain doesn’t know that. It only knows that it’s now got a way to make sense of what’s happened.

    Those stories get locked in and then they impact the way we behave in every similar situation in the future.

    So I’m reminding myself every second of every day that this love story not working out doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.

    So I want to remind you too. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re lovable. You’re loved.

    Permanence is an illusion.

    I spent some time reflecting on why I feel so sad. To be sure, this is grief, of a sort, and my sadness is legitimate and welcome.

    But as I look at what’s behind my sadness, I see stories of clinging.

    Clinging to a person who was never mine to begin with.

    Clinging to stories of the future, which will now never come to be.

    I remind myself, now, of the law of impermanence.

    That all things come and go.

    That all things, both pleasure and pain, pass.

    That there is nothing in this world that will remain as it is in this moment.

    And I remind myself, too, that just because something no longer is, doesn’t mean it never was.

    Look for the good things. 

    It’s easy for me to seek out only the bad in all of this. It’s easy to focus on the sadness and the pain and the reasons why it didn’t work out.

    But I once read a story about a mother who told her son, every day before he went to school, “Look for the good things.” 

    And now, even though his mother is gone, he remembers, always, to look for the good things.

     I loved this story and it’s what I’m trying to do now.

    I think it’s important to acknowledge pain and sadness. They need their time and space. But amongst all that sadness, don’t forget to look for the good things too. They’re there. I promise.

    Lonely image via Shutterstock