Tag: wisdom
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Embracing Aging: I Want to Be Shiny from the Inside
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Yesterday my son called me from college and asked about my day. I told him about my morning, which entailed celebrating my friend’s birthday with her daughter.
My friend passed away almost two years ago. Her daughter reached out to me a couple weeks ago and asked if I would share my morning with her to honor her mom. What a privilege and honor. Hands down YES to that.
The celebration was full of smiles, laughs, tea, stories, tears, yoga mats, birds, fresh air, and tight hugs. As I told my son the story, he asked if my friend’s daughter is cute. (Let’s acknowledge the fact that he asked zero questions about how my friend’s daughter is doing and said nothing about the depth of the meeting.)
“Yes. She’s very cute,” I said. “And I think she’s a bit old for you.”
“How old?” he asked.
“Hmm, I think twenty-eight or twenty-nine,” I replied.
“Oh my god, Mom, she’s a dinosaur.”
My son is twenty. I giggled to myself. If she’s a dinosaur, then I’m…
My friend died because cancer ravaged her body. She fought so hard and had the best attitude, and sprinkled it with humor, which was even more admirable. I miss her every day. I also had cancer, but I am a lucky one. It is now gone, in my rearview mirror, and I’m very grateful. What happened to my perspective along the way is still gnawing at me, though.
I received a breast cancer diagnosis in 2019. I endured chemo, radiation, being bald, living with a port installed inside of my body, chemo pills, and surgery.
What happened after all of my treatments was probably even more challenging. I kept getting sick. One thing after another—diverticulitis, which causes excruciating stomach pain and generally requires antibiotics to cure, UTIs, severe brain fog, reflux, the flu, food poisoning…
It was clear to me that my body was very compromised after cancer due to my immune system getting challenged by all the protocols, and of course the cancer itself. I have been working with an integrative practitioner to clean up my system and to get strong and hardy. This has been hard and arduous work, but I’m not afraid of working.
I started working when I was nine years old, delivering papers in the snow, sleet, and ice in Colorado. I paid for my college and worked three to four jobs the entire time so that I could graduate and get a degree.
My amazing, helpful husband and I raised three boys who went through a myriad of large, not tiny, struggles. I have run six marathons. I consider myself pretty resilient, but this work I have done to get back to homeostasis after cancer has been the most challenging thing I’ve endured. It has been more taxing than the cancer.
There were at least seven days, probably more like twice that number, when I truly thought I was dying. My body was sapped of energy and was fighting to rid itself of the bacteria, mold, metals, candida, and H. pylori. I would lie in bed and try to meditate, but my brain fog was so severe that this was challenging. My body would finally succumb to sleep, only to do it all over the next day.
I woke up feeling horrible for two years. I was preoccupied with my health. It was almost all I thought about. I had not been sick all my life until my diagnosis, at age fifty-two.
I used to feel sorry for friends and for my boys and husband when they were sick. I didn’t even understand it. How could people get sick so often? When I was sick, though, I realized being sick changes everything.
It’s hard to concentrate; it’s hard to focus on others and/or reach out; it’s hard to care. Yes, it is hard to care. It was hard to care about anything other than trying to feel better and hoping I would. Many days I lost hope by the end of the day. My brain did not work right, so I felt numb most of the time. There were a few days when I would not have been upset if I didn’t make it through the night.
I am still working daily with food, supplements, breath, yoga, walking, running, and meditation. I am elated to say I haven’t had that feeling of imminent death in months. My brain fog is gone. I’m sleeping well, and all the other things that were really messed up are now going swimmingly well. I often joke that we are all just big babies because poop and sleep are everything, and baby, I’m pooping and sleeping.
Lately, I’m noticing a new set of thoughts that have entered my brain daily. I am certain it is because I have so much room and time now that I’m not working hard to stay alive. I am not worried about the cancer returning or dying from being so sick anymore.
I have now started noticing how I look. Before cancer, I cared enough to drag myself to Target to get a few items to wear so that I didn’t look like I was living in another decade, or I would order clothes online once in a while. I have always worked out, so I stayed in shape, but I actually glean more from the mental effects of working out, rather than the physical benefits.
I’ve always brushed my hair and teeth and put on some mascara, but I’ve been a “less is more” person. Now I’m realizing that it all worked well when I was younger and didn’t have the lines, wrinkles, and saggy skin.
It’s so interesting to me that during all of my health struggles I never thought about how I looked. Don’t get me wrong, I did not get excited about being bald, but I plopped a wig and a baseball hat on my conehead and kept moving.
Currently, I seem to think about my looks way too often. I do not like it at all. I like to think about how I can make a difference in my little world, how to help others, and how to be a better mom, wife, friend, and teacher. I do not enjoy the thoughts about my extra skin from surgery and from age.
What makes it even worse is that I have an inner compass that is not interested in doing one thing to my body or face. I actually think it’s interesting to see new lines on my face. I’m not saying I like them, but I find it fascinating when they show up out of nowhere.
I think I’m grappling with this because 99% of my friends do botox, fillers, and/or face lifts. When I am around them, I notice their shiny pulled back foreheads, their plump cheeks, and their jacked-up lips.
I actually do not like this look at all. To me, everyone that does this starts to look the same—alien-like. However, I also do not love the look I sport (old and tired). What a weird place that I don’t want to do anything about it and I don’t enjoy how I look.
When I meet up with a friend that I haven’t seen in a bit, I’m sure she is thinking, “Good lord, she looks old. Why doesn’t she do botox at least?” But I’m thinking, “Geez, you don’t look like yourself anymore.”
I notice actresses that possibly share the same thoughts I have, and I get so excited to see natural older women. I feel for them because they are in the public eye. When I saw Dear Edward I thought Connie Britton looked so beautiful and real. I saw some lines, and she looked so natural. Yay. I wanted to thank her for looking like a real female in her fifties. It warmed my heart.
This new internal battle of mine won’t get the best of me. I feel like it’s helpful to even get it all out on paper. Now I get to work on my mind. I am intrigued by the amount of work we can do if we can rein in our thoughts and feelings. This is one of the many reasons that I teach yoga, breath, and meditation. They all can help us with our monkey minds.
This is not easy work, but I’m up for it. I want to be so shiny from the inside that people don’t even notice my looks, and I don’t either.
You know when someone walks into a room and their energy and light draws you to them? Many times, that person isn’t even pretty or handsome, but they exude such a peace that you want to be in their presence.
For me, that is being fully aware of my uniqueness, completely vulnerable, and keeping my heart and soul open to every person I encounter and everything that arises. I am not there yet, but I’m acknowledging the struggle. Isn’t that the first step?
After every class I teach, we end with “namaste,” which translates to the light in me honors and salutes the light in you. If you’re also grappling with your aging face and body, I honor your light. Shine on!
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The Tremendous Pain and Beauty of Letting Things Die
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” ~Joseph Campbell
My husband Jake and I sit in anguish on our beautiful new linen couch, inches away from each other, yet worlds apart. Hours of arguing have left us at another impasse, the stalemate now a decade long.
I look around in despair at the beautiful life we built together, petrified by the decision I know I have to make. My partner, my friends, the country I live in, the ground beneath my feet—all on the brink of collapse.
I stare at the ceiling in heartache. What will be left of my life? So begins my descent into the white-hot heartache of letting things die.
Lost in Translation: Identity and Adaptation
I’d moved from Australia to the United States ten years earlier to be with my soon-to-be husband.
This wasn’t a particularly dramatic move for me. I’d spent my whole adult life up until that point traveling and living in foreign countries and, although there was always a natural adaptation period, I managed. In fact, I loved it—I feel born to be foreign.
So I thought this would be similar; straightforward, even. But I was wrong.
The nature of being foreign is unfamiliarity. Each day feels like a fragile dance between two worlds that requires a huge amount of personal strength, emotional generosity, and energetic adaptation, because you are perpetually read from a different worldview, which means you likely feel constantly misread and misunderstood, even when you speak the same language.
Along with that, and the other difficulties inherent in making a life in a foreign culture that I had learned to deal with—having no outlet for huge parts of who I am, constantly navigating an environment that reflected nothing of my values—I now also had to reckon with the need to adapt to my partner’s lifestyle. I needed to be friends with his friends, take the vacations he wanted to take, and fit myself into the predetermined role of “wife” in his life.
We made large-scale decisions that seemed like compromises at the time, and I was often genuinely happy to make them in the name of the unit. But with each compromise, a piece of my identity slipped away, and I eventually realized how much of what was true to me was being weeded out of “us” and how little importance I was placing on my own desires and happiness.
I became deeply alienated in my life and my marriage. I stretched myself so far outside my own skin that maladaptations started to occur. I would find myself in conversation with friends saying things that felt like they were coming out of someone else’s mouth.
In trying to survive, I’d created a life that reflected little to nothing of my truth, a life that was emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually starving me to death.
But even when I realized this, I couldn’t bring myself to end it. Deconstructing my half-life seemed worse than living it. I knew it would spark a tsunami of such unknown proportions that it was an absurd decision to make. So I didn’t.
For months, I coped with my unhappiness, convinced it was better than starting all over with nothing.
Confronting the Inevitable: Embracing Endings and Loss
A few years ago, I joined a group that met monthly to grow in death awareness and reckon with the grief and heartache of the little and big endings that occur in each moment, month, year, and lifetime, in preparation for our final ending—death.
Through it, I realized that I was avoiding the death of my relationship, for fear of enduring the pain that inevitably came with that, and in doing so, I had forced it and myself to be alive in unnatural ways.
For ten years, my ex-husband and I were two planets orbiting each other—day in and day out. I never thought we would have to live without each other. And even in the later years, despite all we’d been through, I was still in love with him and had great love for him.
Losing this love came with an immense level of pain—even worse that I thought.
For six months I walked around feeling like my chest had been ripped open. The pain was not just a fleeting sensation; it was a tangible, daily presence in my life, so intense that by the time the afternoon came around, I could do nothing but lie down on my bedroom floor, the weight of the world pressing down on my chest. The pain was so dense and heavy it felt like it was squeezing the air from my lungs.
When things we love end or die, we experience pain. Pain and grief are the natural response to death, and to endings in general. But we also have a simple, biological tendency to cling to things that make us feel good and to avoid things that make us feel bad.
This is a paradox—pain is biologically natural, but we try to avert it. In averting it, we miss the point.
The Alchemy of Pain: Increased Resilience and Sensitivity
Pain and fear are so profound that they transform your understanding of life.
If we’re lucky, we don’t get a lot of opportunities for them over the course of our lives, but they are an important part of nature’s design.
The human organism evolves through many things, and pain is a very potent catalyst for our evolution. It makes our interior worlds wider and deeper in their capacity to understand and hold life, and the more pain we allow ourselves to feel, the bigger our tolerance for it grows.
What I came to feel, through the death and ending of my relationship, was more deeply in touch with the nature inside and all around me. It was as though the pain had entered into and worked out all the petrified spaces within me and brought renewed sensitivity back into my life.
Death and Endings are Not Tragedies
Death and endings are natural parts of life. To argue with them is like arguing with our need to eat—we only hurt ourselves. More importantly, we rob ourselves of the biological purpose these endings are here to serve.
I have learned to notice more closely when I’m stopping a death from occurring. I’ve learned to embrace the pain of endings, to love what they’ve done inside me—reshaping my life to bring me to new, more authentic, more deeply fulfilling places I never thought I’d be able to reach.
My deconstruction still hurts every day, but I am much less afraid of it now. I feel way more in partnership with my fear, and I can now recognize it as a healthy, normal part of my own psychology.
As I face life’s uncertainty, I know that when this immense level of pain comes again, I will feel it just as much, but the fear will be more tolerable. And I know now to take solace in the beauty and intention of its design—to grow my heart and soul in breadth and depth.
After a year, my divorce finally came through last week, and when I look around at my life, I realize I was right—not much remains. The people I surround myself with, where I spend my time, and even my business is different.
It will be a while before I can say my healing journey is complete, but as I continue to sink deep into my bones, to reclaim the parts of me that were lost these last few years, and re-learn how to dream my dreams alone, one thing above all else is clear: I am back in touch with everything inside me again, feeling all parts of my humanity and all parts of my life, and that’s all that matters.
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6 Reasons We Ignore Our Needs and How to Stop
“If you feel that you are missing out on fulfillment and happiness, but cannot put your finger on why, perhaps there is something deeper going on. Believe it or not, anyone can develop an unconscious habit of self-deprivation. Usually, this habit begins in childhood.” ~Mike Bundrant
For all my adolescence and over a decade of my adult life, I was what men (and I’m guessing some female friends as well) would refer to as “emotionally needy.” And some did. To my face. With a sense of condescension and judgment.
They were right. I was clingy, insecure, and fragile. I needed regular reassurance. And I was constantly on the lookout for signs that someone might reject or abandon me.
I was also highly dependent on external validation because I didn’t believe I was worthy or good enough. And I treated myself like I wasn’t.
I frequently deprived myself of the things that might make me feel happy and whole while numbing myself with other things that made me feel worse about myself and even more depleted.
Instead of expressing my feelings about things that had hurt me, I attempted to drown and burn my emotions with booze, cigarettes, and weed.
Instead of sharing myself authentically and pursuing relationships with people who seemed receptive and trustworthy, I shapeshifted and chased one emotionally unavailable person after another—repeating a humiliating pattern of rejection and neglect that felt painful yet familiar.
And then there were the many ways I ignored my physical needs. Like pushing myself to work more when I really needed a break—so I could achieve something big enough to feel I was worthy of love. Or forcing myself to exercise when I really needed to rest—so I wouldn’t become big enough to attract the same abuse I’d endured as a bullied kid.
I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but I eventually realized I was so needy because I didn’t value or honor my own needs—so I looked to someone else to do it. It was the ultimate in disempowerment. I was a fragile shell of a human being who desperately hoped someone would fill me up, and convince me I deserved it.
But the irony is that when you don’t believe you deserve good things, you’re likely to sabotage or reject them when they come your way. If you even put yourself in the position to attain them.
And the truth is that no one else can be responsible for meeting all our needs. And most people who try (and inevitably fail) are dealing with their own wounds—fulfilling some kind of savior complex that resulted from childhood trauma. Another pattern I know all too well.
If we want to feel happy, worthy, and loved, we have to take responsibility for meeting those needs for ourselves.
That doesn’t mean we can’t also form relationships with people who see our worth. Just that we won’t depend on their perception to maintain our own. And we won’t require anything (or much) from them to fill our own cup. Because we’ll not only have the awareness and tools to do it ourselves but the confidence that we deserve it.
If you can relate to any of my story or even just some, there’s a good chance you also struggle with recognizing and honoring your needs. And this likely affects more than just your relationships.
It might manifest as deteriorating mental or physical health. It might result in professional burnout if you push yourself to do too much, especially within a toxic work culture. It could also lead to a sense of emptiness and purposelessness if you continually ignore the voice inside that tells you you’re unfulfilled.
The first step to changing all of that is to recognize that you’re devaluing and deprioritizing your needs and do some soul-searching to understand why.
When we understand the conditioning and beliefs that have shaped us, we’re able to work on the type of internal healing that can lead to major external change.
It was only when I healed my deepest core wounds that I was able to change my patterns because I was no longer building from a foundation built on trauma but rather one erected in its place from self-love. Self-love that started as the tiniest seed and eventually grew into a mighty tree—much like the one at the top of this site.
Not sure why you ignore your needs? Perhaps, like me, you’ve experienced some of the following.
6 Reasons We Ignore Our Needs
1. You grew up watching other people putting themselves last.
If your parents or caregivers constantly neglected themselves while trying to please other people, you might have learned from their example that it’s selfish or wrong to put yourself first.
They probably thought the same, and maybe for the same reason. Patterns of self-neglect, self-sabotage, and self-destruction often get passed on from generation to generation until someone says, “No more” and does the work to break the cycle.
2. You learned, by how you were treated growing up, that your needs aren’t important, or as important as other people’s.
If your parents or caregivers ignored or neglected your needs, regularly or as a form of punishment, you might have concluded that you’re not worthy of having your needs met, or that you deserve to be deprived in some way whenever you make a mistake.
You likely didn’t realize as a kid that when your parents failed to show up as you needed them to, it was because they were wrong, not you.
This doesn’t mean they were bad people or even horrible parents. Once again, they were likely repeating what they experienced as kids because they didn’t know any better. (But now you do.)
3. You believe that having needs is somehow wrong or a sign of weakness.
You might mistakenly assume that having needs is the same as being needy—perhaps because someone else ingrained this belief in you, directly or indirectly. Maybe by invalidating your feelings, gaslighting you when you spoke up for yourself, or shaming you for asking for help.
But as I realized, there’s a huge distinction between having needs and being needy. And more importantly, when you’re able to recognize and honor your own needs, you’re not dependent on other people to do it for you. Which is the exact opposite of being needy.
4. You believe prioritizing yourself is unsafe because other people might hurt, judge, or abandon you.
If you were hurt, judged, and abandoned as a result of trying to honor your needs in the past, you might carry a subconscious fear that this could happen again. Consequently, you might feel panic even thinking about honoring your needs.
And if you’re anything like I used to be, you probably don’t realize you’re better off losing anyone you could lose by speaking up for your needs.
5. You believe you need to earn good things and that you haven’t done enough to deserve them yet.
In our achievement-focused culture, it’s easy to conclude that you’re not good enough if you haven’t accomplished something impressive. If this is true for you, you might be putting most of your needs on hold until you achieve something that makes you feel worthy.
In my twenties I spent many days and nights glued to a computer, thinking everything would be better in my life if I could just find a way to make a mark—and some decent money in the process. It didn’t occur to me that I could feel better right in that moment by stepping away, taking care of my needs, and allowing myself to be present while doing something I enjoyed.
6. You’re living in survival mode, and your needs aren’t even on your radar because you’re focused on getting through the day.
If you’re living in a state of chronic stress, due to trauma, grief, or burnout, you’re quite possibly doing the bare minimum, just trying to keep your head above water. When you’re in survival mode, you have no energy left to focus on your needs, big or small.
I experienced this when I was at my worst mentally and physically, struggling with depression and bulimia while also suppressing deep trauma. And I went through something similar (but far less life-threatening) as a chronically sleep-deprived new mother, without a village.
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If you were nodding your head while reading any of the above, you now have a good starting point for changing your patterns.
The next step is to regularly check in with yourself and ask yourself two questions:
- What do I need right now—physically, mentally, and/or emotionally—to feel and be my best?
- What false beliefs do I need to challenge in order to meet that need?
The first question requires you to get really honest with yourself and to let go of the instinct to judge your needs. Because they might be different from other people’s.
You might need to share your feelings in a trusting space while someone else might not require the same type of emotional support in a similar situation.
You might need to get up and move your body while someone else might be able to continue with the task at hand for longer.
You might need time to yourself to recharge while someone else might be fine and even content with socializing for longer.
The important thing to remember is you’re not them, and that’s not only okay but beautiful! Because honoring your unique needs allows you to show up as the best version of your unique self.
As for the second question, when you pause and really think about why you might choose to deprive yourself, you give yourself the opportunity to challenge your instinctive behavior and overcome your conditioning.
I’ve found that a tiny pause can be huge.
In tiny pauses, I’ve realized I need to let myself cry instead of stuffing my painful feelings down, burying all hopes of joy with them. That this isn’t wrong or a sign of weakness but rather a precursor to feeling stronger.
In tiny pauses, I’ve recognized that I need to get outside instead of isolating myself or forcing myself to be productive. That I don’t need to accomplish anything to be worthy of relief and connection.
And in pauses somewhat longer, I’ve found the strength to speak up when someone mistreats or devalues me. Because I remember that, contrary to what I concluded when I was younger, I am worthy of love and respect.
Knowing this is the key to honoring our needs. Because honoring our needs is the number one way we give these things to ourselves.
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How My Wellness Passion Was Actually Destroying My Health
“Your body holds deep wisdom. Trust in it. Learn from it. Nourish it. Watch your life transform and be healthy.” ~Bella Bleue
It didn’t fit. I zipped, tugged, and shimmied, but the zipper wouldn’t budge. I was twenty-three, it was my college graduation, and the dress I had bought a month ago would not zip.
As I stood there crying in the mirror, riddled with exhaustion, anxiety, vulnerability, and sheer overwhelm, I wondered what was happening to my body. In just one month I had gained thirty pounds. I was having one to three panic attacks a day. Everything I ate made me sick, and no matter how much I worked out, I only felt worse.
I was graduating with a degree in clinical nutrition, yet my health was the worst it had been in my entire life. The world was supposed to be my oyster, yet I couldn’t leave the house.
I used to tell people all the time that my “passion” was health. I started my first fitness program when I was nine. Tried my first diet at the age of thirteen.
Since that day on, health and wellness were all-consuming thoughts—to the point that I got a degree in clinical nutrition and became a certified personal trainer and Pilates instructor.
But maybe the problem was that my passion for health was actually an obsession.
In an effort to be fit, happy, and well, I became a victim of marketing and manipulation of “wellness and diet culture.”
Everywhere you turn, there is marketing for wellness and finding your “best health.” Whether it is using fasting to regulate blood sugar, drinking adrenal cocktails to reduce stress, or only eating organic and non-processed foods.
And even if you end up doing it “right,” the next day you are wrong because there is some new trend or hack that is being pushed. This can leave your head spinning and, in the end, it only disrupts your relationship with yourself, with nutrition, and with fitness.
It was on that day that I vowed to chase true health. Here are three lessons that I have learned along the way.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to nutrition and fitness.
You are unique. You have a unique medical history, genetic makeup, environment, and lifestyle that all influence how you and your body respond to nutrition and exercise.
This is known as bio-individuality.
So there is no one RIGHT way to do things. You might respond well to eating lower carb due to a history of insulin sensitivity.
You might respond better to heavier weight training due to your muscle fiber makeup.
You cannot put yourself in a box and try to copy and paste success. You have to honor what your body needs and nourish it accordingly.
I find that my body does best when I eat carb meals and lift heavier weights. I also feel my best when I eat every three hours.
I find that my body shows increased signs of stress when I do high-intensity workouts. And it rejected any attempt I made at intermittent fasting or eating lower carbs.
Finding what works for your body is how you unlock your best self.
But whatever you choose, you must enjoy doing it. Because if you do not enjoy the process, if it does not make you feel good, if it does not add to your life and promote your best self….
… it will be impossible to stick to it long term.
It’s about what you can ADD to your life, not restrict.
Nutrition is the science of providing nourishment to your body to sustain life. Food is the fuel that your body uses to keep you alive and thriving.
Movement is medicine that gives you the strength to take on anything that comes your way.
It is not about restricting, cutting out, or depriving yourself. When you approach it from this mindset, it promotes negativity, it fosters the development of a negative self-image, and it cultivates a culture of guilt.
And no one—absolutely no one—feels good in this type of environment. Instead, think of what you can add to your life and body to enrich it.
I love to eat nachos; I enjoy them every week. Instead of restricting them, I add protein to ensure they are a balanced meal.
You might love to enjoy dessert every evening. A great way to enhance this is to add a delicious fruit with your dessert. Or you can take a walk after your meal to help regulate your blood sugar.
This approach stems from a place of love, support, and encouragement, which makes it much easier to sustain for life.
You can be all-in without being all-or-nothing.
I used to feel so much guilt when my life responsibilities disrupted my workout routine. I would obsess over the missed workout, thinking it would end my progress, and then I would try to find ways to “make it up” later.
There is so much pressure on remaining consistent, which is critical to success.
But do not confuse consistency with perfection.
Perfection is trying to take this structure or “formula for success” and cramming it into your life without any flexibility. Like saying you “have to work out five times a week” or you “can’t eat out.”
Consistency is learning how to shift your goals and your intention to match what is happening in your life at any given time.
Life always has seasons of highs and lows. That is the beauty of it.
There will be times where you have the energy and intention to be consistent and even chase insane growth for your health goals.
Then there will be times where life is calling you elsewhere, so while you are still prioritizing your health, you need to shift how you show up.
Learning how to adapt your health goals and intentions across these phases is how you get long-term success.
Consistency is showing up in the stress. Even if this means doing less than you hoped, you still did it.
Perfection is showing up for ten days in a row then quitting when you miss a day.
An all-in mindset is much better than an all-or-nothing mindset.
If twenty-three-year-old me could see me now, she would be in awe. Her jaw would drop because even though I’m not doing everything “right,” I’m doing everything right for me.
Your health does not have to be as complicated as it sometimes feels. You don’t need a fancy supplement, the latest trend, or another unrealistic habit.
It really comes from creating a lifestyle around what makes you feel your best and happy.
Because you can have the perfect health for yourself without losing yourself in it.
