Tag: wisdom
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Looking Back: The Silver Linings of the Pandemic and Why I’m Grateful
“You gotta look for the good in the bad, the happy in the sad, the gain in your pain, and what makes you grateful, not hateful.” ~Karen Salmansohn
The 2010 decade was difficult for me. Hardly a year went by without someone close to me passing away.
When the tragic decade started, I was in the midst of my residency training and free time was a luxury I did not have. When I graduated and became an attending physician, I was too busy caring for patients on my own to take a break.
In 2018, my world was shattered when one of my best friends died unexpectedly. The sudden shock of it left me feeling helpless. To counter my feeling of despair, I worked even harder to take care of patients in need.
Shortly afterward, my father-in-law was diagnosed with a recurrence of his cancer. Over the next year, my husband and I spent whatever free time we had flying across the country to see him. We watched as he slowly deteriorated until he took his last breath in 2019.
Instead of slowing down, I kept on. It seemed like the more I needed a mental health break to grieve, the harder I worked to suppress my grief.
When the world stopped due to COVID-19, I too was forced to take a pause. With the whole world quarantined, I finally had the time to heal my broken heart.
With more time at home, my husband and I found ourselves taking more walks, cooking more meals, and openly talking about our feelings. We visited with family over FaceTime and Zoom and shared stories about those who were now gone.
We found joy in the small things: a sunrise, a bird’s song, and even just a cup of tea. With the past vastly different from what we were living through and the future feeling so uncertain, we were finally living in the present.
Though the pandemic brought with it so much suffering and sadness, I found unexpected gratitude in the midst of it:
Gratitude for the time that we had with our lost loved ones before COVID-19.
Gratitude for the extra time to spend with one another now.
Gratitude for the technology that allowed us to stay connected with our family and friends.
Gratitude for the reminder that life is fragile and that “taking it slow” is sometimes necessary.
Gratitude for the chance to take a step back and reflect on the important things in life.
Surprisingly, I realized that I felt gratitude for COVID-19.
It’s been the darkest of times. I’m devastated by all the lives lost and all the other losses people have experienced. The course of humanity has changed, and likely not for the better.
But I’ve found solace in the silver linings that have emerged from the pandemic—things that will stay with me long after the virus has passed. I am far more grateful today than I have ever been and with it comes a sense of peace and a newfound strength to carry on.
My father-in-law, for instance, died peacefully at home surrounded by his loved ones. For a year, we were able to join him at his medical appointments and also create new memories. We arranged for a family trip to Mexico so he could enjoy warmth in the wintertime with his sons and brothers.
These otherwise normal events would not have been possible during the beginning of the pandemic. If he had passed away a year later, we wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye the way we did. I’m grateful for the quality time we had.
During the pandemic, I finally grieved my best friend’s death. Instead of keeping myself busy to distract from it as I had done before, I now had time to truly process and feel his loss through the five stages of grief. I think about him at least once a day but instead of feeling sorrow, I’m usually thinking about how he would guide me through this new normal.
While the pandemic is not something to celebrate, it has certainly opened my mind. I never would have thought that something so awful could bring about so much healing and hope.
COVID-19 made it very clear that life is too short to worry about the little things. Life is too precious not to enjoy every moment, especially with our loved ones. When we choose to be grateful for all that we have, we open ourselves up to more joy, peace, and connection.
While we may not be able to control our circumstances, we can control how we react to them. We can choose kindness, understanding, and empathy for ourselves and others.
Did someone just cut me off in traffic? It’s okay, maybe they’re rushing to the hospital to see a loved one. I hope they make it there safely!
Is the Wifi connection poor again? No worries, I can use this time to read a book.
Did I make the wrong decision? It’s okay, I’ll learn from it and make a better choice next time.
Reframing our thoughts to focus on the good, no matter how small, can have a powerful effect on our mood and outlook. Things that would otherwise be frustrating or upsetting are suddenly not so bad.
For all of us, COVID-19 has taken away so much. But if we can find a way to look for the positive and cultivate gratitude then we can find happiness amid hardship. We can come out of this stronger, kinder, and more connected to the people and things that matter most.
I’ve developed several good habits during the pandemic. I now journal every day writing about all the things that made me happy. Whenever I spend time with friends and family, I give them my undivided attention. I enjoy my work—I treat my patients as I would my family and consider it a privilege to be part of their care. I’ve also been taking more time for self-care and nurturing my creative pursuits.
The world has changed and so have I. I am grateful for the life lessons and growth.
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My Big Insight from Meeting the Woman Who Received My Daughter’s Heart
“I lay my head upon his chest, and I was with my boy again. I spent so long in darkness I never thought the night would end. But somehow Grace has found me…and I had to let him in.” ~From “Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt’s surprise Grammy win for 2023 Song of the Year was no surprise to me. In “Just Like That” she tells the story of a woman who is unexpectedly visited by the man who got her late son’s heart. It’s a song that can reduce anyone to tears.
I have been that woman—that Donor Mom, as we’re known in the transplantation world. Bonnie nailed the most important thing about these strange, mysterious, indelible connections we form with our organ and tissue recipients.
Because both donors and recipients are pushed to the edge of life, our bullshit magically disappears. For all of us, everything we previously worried about suddenly seems petty, unimportant, beside the point—except for one sterling truth.
Someone out there, in the vast sea of humanity, is carrying your precious child’s organs or tissues around. Somewhere out there, a little piece of that beloved son or daughter still exists.
They’re not entirely gone. And so, despite the chaos, the pain and the crushing grief, you finally understand the larger truth: life goes on.
I lost my free-spirited, blues-singing, twenty-two-year-old daughter, Teal, to a medically unexplainable cardiac arrest. At the time I was a driven workaholic whose focus was squarely on myself and my terribly important agenda. I had little interest in the plight of others.
By contrast, Teal was known to her friends as “Kwan Yin,” because of her sensitivity and her vast compassion.
The night before she died, Teal called me up. “I think I’m going to have a really big seizure,” she told me. Her epilepsy was usually well controlled by medication, so I wasn’t too concerned. Still, I offered to take her to the nearest ER, but Teal refused.
“They’re just going to tell me to change my meds,” she said. “But I like these. They make me feel closer to God.”
Then a strange thing happened. I found myself asking Teal whether this experience had anything to do with her life purpose. It did, she confirmed, because as we both knew, Teal wanted to be a healer.
“I’m so glad you asked me that,” she said, sounding somewhat relieved.
The next night Teal appeared an hour late at the dinner date we had arranged in a San Francisco restaurant. She drifted in, ate her dinner, and drifted out, without saying much at all. Two hours later, she collapsed in a locked bathroom and remained in a coma until she was taken off of life support six days later.
So Teal became an excellent candidate for organ donation.
When we were asked if we wanted to donate her organs, we agreed, knowing this was probably as close as Teal would ever get to being a healer. Then we crawled away on our hands and knees, uncertain how on earth we were ever going to carry on.
All we knew was that we wanted contact, so one year later, we wrote a letter to Teal’s three organ recipients, hoping for the best.
After two years, a letter from the young woman who got Teal’s heart and kidney arrived in my inbox.
“I have been trying to put together my letter for so long, not even knowing where to begin…” she wrote.
She explained that she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure when she was nineteen and nearly died three times in the eight years prior to her transplant. The transplant had dramatically improved her life, she explained, because she finally had the energy to do the things most young women her age take for granted.
She went on to list all of the things she now hoped to achieve: buying property and building a home, traveling the world, having lots of animals. Getting a degree in medical imaging. Getting married.
“I feel like your daughter and I would have been good friends, if given the chance,” she concluded. “She is part of me, and I will be forever grateful.”
When we finally met a few years later, on the very same beach in San Francisco where we once scattered Teal’s ashes, we hugged each other hard for a long, long time, tears streaming down our faces. We’d both been to the edge of life, this complete stranger and I, and we’d come back together.
That afternoon, I got to listen to Teal’s heart. It was my daughter’s heartbeat, yes, but it sounded like any heart, really. And that is when I realized something huge.
Teal used to talk about something called the Unified Field of Love, a space that exists between all of us, where we can connect once we put aside our differences. In this place, we remember that we are all far more alike than different.
For if your heart, or lungs, or kidneys, or liver or corneas can work just fine in my body, and mine in yours, how different can any of us actually be?
I think about this when a family member and I don’t see eye to eye, or when someone cuts me off in the abundant Bay Area traffic. And I try to when I shut off someone’s political rant on the TV, mid-sentence.
That person is me—whether I like it or not in the moment. They’re just experiencing life in a different lane.
At such moments, in spite of myself, I am moved to compassion. To love. To Grace, as Bonnie so beautifully puts it in her lyrics. When we see ourselves in each other, we can’t help but choose grace, no matter how broken we are. And no matter how bitter we may have become.
Today, I’m still in touch with Teal’s heart and kidney recipient, and she has achieved everything on her list and then some.
“I will never take for granted what Teal has given me,” she wrote to us in that first, incredible letter.
It’s clear to me that she hasn’t. And neither have we.
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30 Simple Mindfulness Practices to Help You Focus and Be Present
“The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.” ~Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Do you ever feel like you’re too busy for meditation?
You understand the benefits, and you’d really like to commit to it. But you’re a busy person. You have deadlines to meet, food to prepare, bills to pay, kids to raise, family members to call—and even that’s barely scratching the surface.
We’ve all been there. I certainly have.
Before I found mindfulness, I struggled with concentration for years. When I moved away from home to make a living as a freelance writer and travel the world, it only got worse.
Suddenly I was the other side of the globe, with no family and often no friends.
I should have been looking forward to the next exciting meal, going out and meeting interesting new people, or just appreciating the sights and sounds of an unfamiliar city. Instead, without the structure that I was accustomed to at home, I was stuck in a perpetual state of work-related anxiety.
As the stress continued to build, I got the uncomfortable feeling that I was squandering the opportunity of a lifetime. I was never fully committed to either work or play, and as I result I wasn’t able to appreciate either.
I knew I had to do something.
So I tried to throw myself into meditation. But I could never keep it up. I’d do two or three days in a row, then I’d skip one, then two, then a week, and suddenly I’d give up.
Then I read about mindfulness. I found that I didn’t need to take a big chunk out of my time out to practice it.
I could be mindful at any time and just fit it into my normal day-to-day activities. A moment here, a moment there, and surprisingly quickly it became a habit. I was calmer, more focused, and my mental health was improving.
And what happened next was a shock.
One morning a few months later I sat down to meditate. I set my alarm for twenty minutes, focused on my breath, and followed through till my alarm buzzed. But it was different. It was a lot easier than I remembered.
It felt normal—natural even. So I did the same the next day, and the next, till I’d gone a month meditating every single day. Small daily mindfulness practices had ended up being a perfect stepping stone to longer meditation sessions.
A few months later a friend of mine was struggling with his work, much in the same way I had. I wanted to see how I could help, so I wrote him an email listing each and every way that I had tried to bring mindfulness into my life. The ideas below are an extension of our conversation.
I hope they make as big a difference to your life as they have done mine.
How to Use These Practices to Cultivate Laser-Sharp Focus
Think of each situation as a trigger to bring you back to the present moment. You definitely don’t have to start with all of them; in fact, I’d start by choosing three or four to practice. Then try adding one a week until you can incorporate all of them into your life.
1. Waking up.
As soon as you wake up, before you get out of bed, take three deep breaths. This will have the double benefit of quietening your mind and giving your brain an oxygen boost to get you out of bed.
2. Getting out of bed.
Not all of us have time for yoga. But we all have time to stretch. When you first stand, take a deep breath in and stretch your hands as high as you can toward the ceiling, fingers pointing straight up. Then as you breathe out, relax, lean forward, and try to touch your toes. Make sure to focus on your breathing and the sensations of the stretch.
3. Making your bed.
Making your bed first thing in the morning is a great opportunity to practice mindfulness. Try to be completely engaged in the activity, putting all your attention into the folding of the sheets.
4. Showering.
As you take a shower, spend a minute or two just feeling the water on your skin; notice the temperature, the pressure, and the sounds as it falls.
5. Getting dressed.
Most of us rush to get our clothes on, but when you get dressed in the morning, take a second to pay attention to the way they feel on your skin, the texture of the material, and the warmth that they provide.
6. Boiling the kettle.
Instead of running around the house and trying to do everything before the kettle boils, sit quietly and listen intently to the water bubble or the kettle whistle.
7. Drinking tea or coffee.
When you drink tea of coffee, sip slowly and be mindful of the taste, temperature, and subtle effect it has on your body.
8. Brushing your teeth.
We all (hopefully) do this. So it’s a great place to start focusing on the present moment.
9. Listen to music.
Listening to some relaxing music before you leave the house in the morning is a great way to center yourself. Completely immerse yourself in the song. Be aware of the volume, cadence, tempo, the uniqueness of the sounds.
10. Writing a to-do list by hand.
Whether you do this first thing in the morning or last thing at night, creating a to-do list can quell anxieties and bring your attention to exactly what you have to do throughout the day. Using an old-fashioned pen and paper will help you be more mindful then will typing it in your phone or computer.
11. Running.
Leave your music at home and just pay attention to the sounds of whatever is around you as you run. You might want to focus on the rhythm of your feet as they hit the ground.
12. Touching your hair.
Next time you catch yourself running your hands through your hair, pay attention how it feels in your hands. Is it soft, spikey, curly, wavy?
13. Stopping at a red light.
A lot of us get angry, nervous or tense when we drive. Every time you stop at a red light, take a deep breath and try to relax any tension you might be holding in your jaw, neck or shoulders.
14. When waiting.
Whenever you find yourself waiting, whether it be for a meeting, at a bus stop, or an appointment, try to relax all the muscles in your face—your jaw, your brows, your eyelids.
15. Walking.
As you’re walking down the street, pay attention to how your legs and feet feel against the ground. Check your breathing. It’s common to breathe shallow when you’re in public, so make sure you’re still breathing through your diaphragm.
16. Hugging or handshakes.
No one likes a cold hug. Make sure the first person you hug or shake hands with today feels like you gave it your complete attention instead of feeling like your mind was somewhere else.
17. Exercising.
At the gym, be completely focused on whatever exercise you are doing. You can let your mind wander when you’re taking a break, but throughout the exercise itself, be focused entirely on the practice.
18. Eating lunch.
At lunchtime, take a bite out of your food and chew it slowly. Be mindful of the texture; is it crunchy or soft? Taste; is it spicy, bitter, sweet, or sour? Temperature; is it hot, cold, or just lukewarm?
19. Talking to someone.
Try to be completely present in conversation, making eye contact and listening to what they say without thinking about what you want to add next or where you’re going to be later.
20. At your desk.
If you work at a desk and catch yourself slouching, take a deep breath, sit up straight, and relax the muscles in your face, your neck, and finally your shoulders.
21. Set a phone alarm.
A lot of people see technology as a hindrance to mindfulness, and that’s true to an extent. But we can use things like phone alarms to remind us to spend a few seconds bringing our awareness back to our breath throughout the day.
22. Follow an insect.
Yep. You may feel like a child, but that’s a good thing—children live in the present. If you see an insect, forget everything else around you and watch how it moves for a few seconds. Be aware that it’s a living being just like you.
23. Getting home at night.
When you walk through the door to your house or apartment, pause and think about how grateful you are to be home. Whether it’s cold outside, and you’ve just walked into warmth, or you’re returning home to someone you love – there’s always something to appreciate.
24. Taking off your shoes.
We all like to take our shoes off after a long day. Pay attention to how your feet feel on the ground, try to move your toes around and feel each one individually.
25. Cooking.
Cooking offers a variety of ways to be mindful. You can hone your attention in on your own movements, the sounds in the kitchen, the taste of the food you are preparing, or the aromas of the different spices as they cook.
26. Watching T.V.
A lot of us work anxiously all day, and when we get some leisure time end up too distracted to truly enjoy it. If you’re watching T.V try to be fully present to what you’re watching, as opposed to half-heartedly talking to a loved one or browsing through your phone.
27. Vacuuming.
Counter-intuitive, I know—this isn’t for everyone. But focusing on the noise of the vacuum can be effective because it often drowns out any other sensory distractions.
28. At dinner.
Think about the ingredients that have gone into your meal—where have they come from? If it’s fish, for example, imagine the fisherman catching it at sea, bringing it to the docks, and selling it to local farmers markets.
29. At least five minutes of Do Nothing Time (DNT).
No checking your phone. No reading a newspaper. Don’t even try to meditate. Just sit there, and if any feelings come up—discomfort, restlessness, or even guilt that you’re not doing anything—just embrace them. Most of the time we’re so wrapped up in doing something ‘productive’ that it’s difficult to just sit still and do nothing.
30. Lying in bed.
Before you go to sleep, take a moment to think of one thing you were grateful for that day, no matter how big or small, or how difficult the day was. This will condition your mind for positivity, and help you sleep better.
As you start to see the benefits of these daily practices, you’ll feel more focused, energized, and you can move on to longer focused meditation sessions. Start taking a few moments out of your day to practice mindfulness now, and you’ll enjoy the rewards for years to come.
Do you have any experience with some of these practices? Let us know in the comments!
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8 Things Not to Say to Someone Who’s Struggling with Anxiety
“Sometimes just being there is enough.” ~Unknown
It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like someone was holding me by the neck, against a wall, and the floor might drop beneath us at any moment.
I’m describing a panic attack, but this has actually happened to me before—being held by the neck against a wall, that is, not the other part. Growing up I experienced many moments like that, moments when I felt unsafe, physically and emotionally.
There were countless experiences that reinforced to me, over the years, that I couldn’t let my guard down, because at any moment I could be hurt.
So I learned to be constantly anxious, eternally on guard, ever ready for a threat. I learned to be tightly wound, my fight-or-flight response permanently triggered.
And I learned to see minor threats as major problems, because that’s another thing I learned as a kid: Sometimes seemingly small things could make other people snap.
Unsurprisingly, I grew into an adult who snapped over small things all the time.
Got bleach on my interview outfit? No one will ever hire me now!
She doesn’t want to be my friend? Why doesn’t anyone love me?
Found a suspicious lump? I’m going to die!
Okay, so that last one isn’t actually a “small thing,” but the point is I was constantly scared. Life was a string of lions to tame, and I lived in a land without chairs.
I believe my early experiences, being mistreated in varied environments, led to my years of depression and anxiety. For you or your loved one, there may be other causes.
Some people are genetically predisposed to anxiety, some struggle because of stressful circumstances, and for some, physical conditions play a role.
But this isn’t a post about what causes anxiety. This is a post about what not to say when someone’s panicking.
Anxiety can completely overwhelm your mind and body, and we often exacerbate our pain by being cruel to ourselves in our head.
“Get it together!” we scream at ourselves. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you such a mess?”
But none of these thoughts are helpful. Though the people who love us are generally not as cruel, they sometimes say less than helpful things, as well, solely because they don’t know any better.
Even as someone who has experienced anxiety, I have said some of the things below to others because it feels powerless to see someone struggling. And when you feel powerless, it’s hard to think straight.
All you know is that you want to fix it for them. You want to have answers. But sometimes when we’re in fix-it mode, despite our best intentions, we inadvertently add fuel to the fire.
So, as someone who’s been on both sides of the coin, I’d like to share some phrases to avoid when someone is dealing with anxiety, and offer a little insight into what actually helps.
Things Not to Say to Someone Who’s Struggling with Anxiety
1. What you’re stressing about won’t even matter in a year.
In many cases, this is true. If someone’s worrying about a minor car accident, it’s entirely likely what they’re stressing about won’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But this isn’t a universally true statement.
A minor accident could lead to major car trouble, which could lead to missing work, which could lead to lost pay, which could lead to getting evicted. And that could very well matter in a year. Is this chain of events likely? No, but it’s still possible.
It’s not reassuring to tell someone the worst-case scenario won’t happen because sometimes, it does. But more importantly, in that moment when someone is in the midst of anxiety, it feels catastrophic, and you can’t rationalize those feelings away—at least not immediately.
When someone is panicking, they don’t need logic; they need validation. They need validation that yes, life is uncertain and “bad” things do happen, and validation that it’s okay to feel scared.
They also need a reminder that in this moment, they are safe. And that’s all they need to think about right now: breathing and grounding themselves in this moment in time.
2. Life’s too short to worry.
All this does is create more anxiety, because in addition to whatever that person was initially stressing about, they now have to worry that they’re missing out on life because of an emotional response that feels beyond their control.
Yes, life is short. And we all naturally want to make the most of it. But you wouldn’t tell a diabetic “Life is too short to have too much sugar in your blood.” Sure, you’d encourage them to make healthy food choices, but you’d realize this phrasing would vastly oversimplify the effort required from them to manage their condition and maintain healthy habits.
The same is true of anxiety. Anyone who’s struggled with it understands there are far better ways to live, and this knowledge pains them. What they may not know is how to help themselves.
3. Calm down.
“Calm down” is the goal, not the action step. It’s what we all want to do when we’re panicking. It’s the shore in the distance, and it can feel miles away as we gasp for air in the undertow of emotion and struggle to stay afloat.
If you know any good methods that help you calm yourself—deep breathing exercises, for example—by all means, share them. But it’s probably best not to get into much detail in the moment when someone is panicking.
Imagine someone hanging off a cliff, about to fall into a pit full of tigers. That’s what anxiety can feel like.
If you were to stand at the edge and scream, “COME TO YOGA WITH ME TOMORROW! DID YOU KNOW THAT YOGA CAN HELP YOU…” that person would likely be too consumed by their terror to hear you your convincing argument.
What they need to hear in that moment is “Take my hand!” And the same is true of anxiety. Hold their hand. Help them breathe. Help them come back into the moment. Then, when they feel safe, that’s a good time to tell them what’s helped you.
That’s another important thing to remember: We all want to hear what’s helped other people deal, not what someone who’s never experienced our struggles has read about. Share your experience, not your expertise. None of us need a guru; we need friends who aren’t afraid to be vulnerable.
4. It’s no big deal.
This comes back to the first point: In that moment, it feels like a big deal. A very big deal. It feels like the biggest, scariest, worst thing that could happen, and you can’t turn that fear off like a switch.
When someone says, “It’s not a big deal,” the anxious mind translates this as “You’re overreacting—which is further proof that you’re broken.”
Instead, try, “I know it’s hard. And scary. But you’re not alone. I’m here to help you get through this.”
It’s amazing how much it helps when someone reinforces that it’s okay to be scared—it’s human, even—but we don’t have to face it alone.
5. It’s all in your head.
Yes, thoughts and fears all originate in our head, but that doesn’t make our feelings any less real. The anxious mind translates “It’s all in your head” as “Your head is defective,” because knowing that thoughts fuel anxiety doesn’t make it any easier to stop thinking anxious thoughts.
When we’re thinking anxious thoughts, what we need is a reminder that they often arise naturally—for all of us. We don’t need to worry about changing them. We just need to practice accepting them when they arise and disengaging from them.
So try this instead: “I can understand why you’re thinking those thoughts. I’d probably think some of the same things if I were in your shoes. If you want, you can tell me all your anxious thoughts. They’re trying to protect you in their own way, so maybe they just need to be heard and then they’ll quiet a bit.”
6. Let it go.
I have, over the years, written many posts with advice on letting go. I believe it’s healthy to strive to let go of anger, resentment, fears, the past, and anything else that compromises our ability to be happy and loving in the present.
I think, though, letting go is something we may need to do repeatedly. It’s a practice, not a one-time decision, and certainly not something we’re well equipped to do in a moment when we’re gripped by fear.
Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote, “It’s not a matter of letting go—you would if you could. Instead of ‘Let it go’ we should probably say ‘Let it be’.”
That’s what we need in the moment when we’re panicking: We need to give those feelings permission to exist. We need to give ourselves permissions to be a human being experiencing those feelings. And we need to know the people around us love us enough to accept us as we are—even if it might make them feel more comfortable if we were better able to just “let it go.”
7. Things could be so much worse.
Yes, things could always be worse, we all know this. Like many statements on this list, this phrase does little other than evoke guilt. And for the anxious mind, guilt can lead to more anxiety.
Now, on top of their initial fears, they’re worrying that they’re not a good person because they can’t rationalize their anxiety away with gratitude.
I’m not suggesting that it never helps to put things in perspective, but coming from someone else, this almost always sounds condescending. Condescension leads most of us to feel inferior, and it’s even worse when we’re already feeling ashamed because of our struggle, as many of us do.
8. Be positive.
Anxiety isn’t just about negativity. For many of us, like me, it’s a learned response from a traumatic past in which we felt persistently unsafe. You can train your brain to be more optimistic, and in doing so, minimize anxious thoughts. But this involves far more time, effort, and support than the phrase “be positive” conveys.
Also, “be positive” suggests that “positive” is something one can become—permanently—which ignores the reality that lows are inevitable in life. No one is positive all the time, and often the people who seem to be are actually being passive-aggressive.
Phrases like “Look on the bright side” and “See the glass as half full” can seem incredibly patronizing when you’re hurting. They minimize just how hard it can be to see the world optimistically, especially when you’ve experienced trauma.
So instead, show them what it looks like to be positive. Be loving and open and calm and accepting and supportive and present. This probably won’t heal them of their struggle or banish their anxiety in the moment when they’re panicking, but it’s amazing how you can affect someone for the better by being a healthy mirror.
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After reading this list, you might think I’m suggesting there is no way to heal from anxiety; we just need to help people accept it and get through it. But that’s not actually my point.
There are tools out there to help people. You can find some of them here. (I personally recommend therapy, yoga, and meditation, as these three tools combined have helped me learn to better regulate my emotions.)
My point is that even when someone is making the efforts to help themselves, it takes time, they may still struggle, and in those moments, they simply need love, acceptance, and, support.
We all do—even you, loved one who tries your best and has only the best intentions.
If you’ve said some of these things in the past, know that we recognize you’re imperfect, just like us, but we still appreciate all that you do. We also appreciate that you read articles like this to better understand and support us.
The world can be a scary place, but knowing that people, like you, care enough to help us makes it feel a whole lot safer.
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Nothing You Do Will Be Enough If the Relationship Isn’t Right
“Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than hurt yourself trying to put them back together.” ~Unknown
A couple of months ago my dear friend and I were chatting over coffee.
The subject turned into past relationships and the reasons why they didn’t work. My friend shared a story about her ex-fiancé—one of those “this clearly isn’t going to work, but I sure will try my hardest since I don’t give up” ones. Yeah, that kind.
It’s the kind of story that, telling it now, with hindsight and time on our sides, seems absurd. It’s the kind of story you think only happens to other people—the kind you never want to admit is a part of you. The details may be different, but most of us are familiar with the story’s main plot.
Maybe it involves someone lying, someone leaving, or someone cheating. Maybe it involves a dramatic climax like someone crashing your car, jumping out of your moving car, or disappearing for days (yes, all these happened).
It’s the time when someone went too far and then maybe tried to backtrack. It’s the moment when you feel like you are having an out-of-body experience because you don’t recognize yourself or the person in front of you.
They all end the same, those stories. The grand finale involves your heart being shattered into fragments so small that you think you will never heal, but eventually you do.
This particular story ended with my friend telling me, “You know, it’s never enough when the person’s not the one.”
I made her stop and repeat that.
It’s such a simple, sensible, and yes, obvious idea, but for some reason when you are in the midst of a relationship that clearly isn’t going to work out, it can be so hard to see this, know it, accept it, and end it.
We reflected how in the past we buckled up and stayed on, committed to a fault, trying everything in our power to make the doomed relationship work.
Loyalty prevailed over logic. Lines blurred and things appeared acceptable, even though they were far from it. Giving up wasn’t an option, yet somehow crying, begging, yelling, excusing, and rationalizing seemed completely reasonable.
Instead of just gracefully letting the relationship go and moving on, we stayed until finally, we hit our breaking points. (Coincidentally, our breaking points involved a lot of crying, hiccupped breathing, and being huddled on the floor—not pretty, but hey, it’s the truth.)
How much trouble, anxiety, worry, stress, and time would we have saved had we listened to what our intuition had been telling us all along—or at least way before the floor became our friend?
“It’s never enough when the person’s not the one.”
Do relationships take work? Absolutely. But there’s a difference between doing the work needed and working yourself to the ground. There’s a difference between giving what’s necessary and giving your whole self away.
Sometimes it may feel like things are falling into place or transforming for the better, but eventually it turns bad again. Because ultimately, when the person is not the one, no amount of trying, praying, begging, wishing, or hoping can change that. And that is a blessing in disguise—even if you can’t see it right away.
When I think of the best relationships I have had—friendships, romances, colleagues, mentors—they all have one thing in common. They came easily, naturally, and without the drama of crying, cursing, screaming, hair pulling, and intervention from my loved ones.
Was every moment picture perfect and the stuff movies are made of? Of course not. But always, the laughter and smiles outweighed the frustrations and tears.
I will say this, though. That was then; this is now.
It may have taken me a while to learn the lesson that relationships aren’t meant to be so difficult—at least not all the time—but now that I have learned it, I hope to never forget it.
I believe I’ve become better at acknowledging what falls in the normal boundaries of a healthy relationship and what crosses the border into that dark, stormy place that is difficult—but not impossible—to navigate out of.
It’s something I have to remind myself of and something I work on, but today I listen more to my intuition, pay closer attention to signals of warning, and trust myself more. Whenever possible, I choose peace over chaos, happiness over distress. Above all, I choose love—love for myself and love for others.
It turns out it’s just a lot easier that way.
Because the floor? It’s a hard, cold, uncomfortable place to be. I prefer to be standing on solid ground with my head high and my soul smiling.
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How I Stopped Being Everything I Hated About My Parents
“The beautiful thing about life is that you always change, grow, and get better. You aren’t defined by your past. You aren’t your mistakes.” ~Unknown
When I was an angsty fourteen-year-old, I remember screaming at my parents that I never (ever!) wanted to become like either of them. And I meant it.
My dad was a workaholic who was never at home. When he was at home, he was emotionally unavailable, arguing with my mother, or he’d escape the stress of our house by going to the betting shop to gamble.
My mother had erratic mood swings, did not allow me to have age-appropriate boundaries, and would talk to me about the lack of intimacy between her and my father. These were, unfortunately, not role models that inspired me.
As I entered my twenties and experienced adult life for the first time, I continued to carry the ideation that my life would be different. I was determined not to become my parents. And for many years, I naively lived life proudly thinking I had not turned into them.
Then, one day, I opened my mouth and heard my mother’s voice come out. I can’t even remember what I said, but I recall the feeling of utter despair. Despite all my thinking and wishing over the years, I had become my parents. This prompted me to reflect on my life so far, and I realized that I had repeated many of my parents’ patterns.
I had become a workaholic to avoid feeling my emotions, was in an abusive relationship but didn’t realize this until well after it had ended, and I struggled to know how to develop healthy friendships due to difficulties setting boundaries.
Shit. Damn. Bugger it.
I’d accidentally become my parents! Why was all my thinking and wishing over the years not enough to stop this from happening? I thought that I had more control over my life than this.
During my own self-discovery journey, I found that there are many reasons why we repeat the same family patterns. I also learned that we can change them.
Humans learn from watching and copying other people’s behavior, and children are sponges that soak up everything in their environment.
For example, when I was a child, I remember my dad ordering a meal at a restaurant, and the vegetables on his plate were stone cold. Instead of sending the meal back and asking for hot veggies, he complained about how terrible the restaurant was and ate the cold meal. When I became an adult, I struggled to assert myself in similar situations, which led to a lot of anger and resentment.
Learned behavior is not just a one-time thing. It is passed down from generation to generation.
For instance, my paternal grandparents lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s, before my dad was born.
They taught my dad that food was a scarce resource, so he carried this belief with him into his adulthood, and subsequently passed this down to me through not being able to model assertive behaviors.
This is called intergenerational trauma because the unhealthy family dynamics continue throughout new generations. Generally, intergenerational trauma is defined by events that affect people profoundly, such as child abuse, parental incarceration, poverty, war, natural disasters, etc.
Sometimes, we aren’t even aware that our family dynamics are unhealthy, or we might be aware but are too scared to change. This is usually because humans have a strong desire to be accepted and belong. In fact, this is very important for our survival.
For some people, repeating those family dynamics means that they continue to be a part of the family unit.
From a young age, I was often labelled as the ‘black sheep’ of the family, because I voiced the unspoken, toxic family rules. It became easier for me to distance myself from my family rather than remain enmeshed in a family environment that was detrimental to my mental health and well-being.
The good news is we can change our patterns so that we don’t become (or continue to be) our parents.
The first step is to be aware of the unhelpful patterns that you’re carrying with you. Without awareness, we cannot change.
I started by asking myself what emotions I experienced frequently and whether they ever seemed like they were out of context or disproportionate to the situation.
One emotion I often struggled with was jealousy. Whenever a friend would share something positive about their life—if they got a new car, got a promotion at work, or won a competition—my go-to emotion was jealousy.
This impacted my friendships, as I was constantly comparing my life to theirs and driving them away by trying to find ways to make sure my life was more successful. This led to perfectionism in everything that I did, and let me tell you, it was exhausting! I couldn’t maintain this lifestyle, and I felt like I was drowning.
When I hit a low point after my relationship ended, I sought therapy. Through therapy, I learned that the reason I compared myself to other people so frequently was due to the beliefs I held about myself. I didn’t feel like I was good enough as I was. This made a lot of sense when we explored the relationship I had with my parents.
They regularly compared me to other kids and were only proud of me when I performed better than anyone else. It made sense that, as an adult, I would experience strong feelings of jealousy toward other people. Jealousy meant that I was constantly trying to prove my worth to other people rather than living life on my own terms.
I then looked at my beliefs about this situation/emotion and thought about where and when those beliefs developed. Identifying the patterns behind my behavior was a positive first step in my inner healing journey, because you can’t heal what you don’t know.
Because I wasn’t taught what emotions were or how to understand my emotions as a kid, I needed to learn how to do this as an adult.
My therapist helped me to better understand the motivations behind our emotions and develop new strategies to cope with these.
For example, with my jealousy, I learned that this was a response from fear and insecurity. I was able to learn to identify my thoughts, and when I realized that I wasn’t actually unworthy but rather that was the story I had learned from my parents, I was able to choose different behaviors instead of continuing to follow the same old patterns as before.
I recognized that perfectionism meant I worked too much, so I learnt how to slow down through mindfulness and yoga. Once I was able to recognize my emotions for what they were, rather than reacting to them without awareness, I was able to make better choices about how I wanted to respond to that emotion.
Having that space to understand my emotions meant that I could move out of the comparing myself to other people situation, and I was able to step into the entrepreneurial space and create a business that I love. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t done the inner work to change and not become my parents.
I learned this was why my wishful thinking didn’t work. I knew I didn’t want to be like my parents, but without additional support from a therapist, I didn’t know what to do instead! Therapy helped me learn how to deal with old patterns in new ways.
From there, it was all about practice. These habits and patterns existed for many, many years. I knew they would not change overnight. However, with perseverance and practice, I was able to make meaningful changes in my life. I found it helpful to keep a journal to record my progress so that I didn’t forget how far I’d come.
Finally, it was important for me to remember that my parents are human too. In addition to recognizing the unhelpful habits they taught me, I found it useful to remember some of the positive traits or experiences I’ve gained.
Even though my dad was a workaholic, he instilled a strong work ethic in me, which has helped me when creating my own business. My mother loved to travel, and she has definitely passed that love to me as well.
Reminding myself of these things allows me to acknowledge my parents’ humanness, especially in moments where I find it hard to offer them grace. For me, reminding myself of the positives is a way to honor my need to have compassion for myself.
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How I Learned the Power of Letting Go After My Father Developed Dementia
“There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.” ~Helen Keller
When I was eleven years old, I would force myself to stay awake until the wee hours of the morning.
I was severely anorexic at a time when eating disorders were considered an “inconvenience” you brought on yourself. Anorexia was dismissed as a rich, white girl’s disease (although we were certainly not rich)—a disease that was easily curable with a prescription for a chocolate cake.
Although my emaciated body was a dead giveaway of my condition, it was school that noticed the change in me first. My once stellar grades began to slip, and I was falling behind in the advanced academic and art program I was a part of.
“Just eat already,” my teachers would tell me, and when I tossed my lunch into the garbage, I’d be sent to the nurse’s office to watch The Best Little Girl in the World. Again.
At home, grape-flavored bubble gum and bouillon cubes were my foods of choice. I did toe-touches, crunches, and jogged at least four times a day, passed out some mornings, and hid my body under layers of flannel shirts on the hottest August days. But even as my disease raged, home was still my refuge, a place where my eating disorder could take its hair down and run wild.
Thankfully, both my parents worked full-time and often through dinner, so mealtimes weren’t much of a struggle. And when we did eat together, I became as much of a master at hiding my food as I was at hiding my body.
I was also smart. Or maybe conniving is a better word. A weekly trip to Friendly’s for ice cream (the irony of that name!) fooled my overworked parents into believing that I was fine.
Puberty had simply shaved off any “baby fat” I had, they reasoned. What they didn’t know was that puberty never had a chance with me. No sooner did my period appear, I starved it away.
But even with the ice cream trips and their growing awareness, I still felt fairly safe at home.
Until that one moment that changed everything.
On a sunny, unremarkable fall day (Isn’t that what Joan Didion tells us? We are most surprised by those tragedies and traumas that happen on “normal” and “beautiful” days…?), my father surprised me by picking me up early from school.
Hurrying to the office for dismissal, there was a tiny, naive part of my eleven-year-old self that thought maybe he was surprising me with a trip to Disney World.
That’s what happened to my friend, Mary, the previous year. When she returned from her impromptu trip, she was sporting tanned skin and a perpetual grin. She then spent most of our fifth-grade year with mouse ears glued to the top of her head.
But there was no Magic Kingdom for me. Instead, without so much as an inkling as to where we were going, my father hustled me into his car, and we drove away. Sitting next to my father, a man who held all the power over me, my stomach ached as I wondered what was about to happen.
My weak heart pounded in my chest, and as we drove, I prayed it wouldn’t give out. Catching a glimpse of my ashen skin and white, cracked lips in the rearview, I knew that I was nothing more than a stray dog in a shelter, ripped from my cage by a complete stranger, wondering if I was about to be put down, thrown into a fight, or worse.
Finally, we arrived at our destination, a medical center in a strip mall. As soon as we walked through the front door, I gagged on the thick scent of medicine and grape lollipops that hung in the air. Without a second to catch my breath, I was whisked into a doctor’s office and onto a scale.
Looking down her nose at me, the doctor snapped, “You’re too skinny. You need to gain weight.” While I stood there on the scale, she turned to my father and diagnosed anorexia nervosa.
Then she looked at me. “If you don’t eat,” she warned in a sharp tone, “we’ll have you put in a place for ‘girls like you’.” She then informed me that once I was locked in that wretched prison of force-feedings and shackles (as I imagined it), I wouldn’t see my family again until I was “fixed.”
When we returned to the car, my father spoke the first words he had said to me all day: “So? Will you gain weight?”
“Yes,” I answered, too frightened to fight. Too scared to advocate for myself. Too terrified to tell him that this wasn’t a choice. I wasn’t choosing to starve myself; I was sick.
But even if I had spoken, he wouldn’t have understood. No one did.
From that moment on, I knew that I was completely alone. That’s when I began to stay up way past midnight, quietly jogging in place. I’d stop only to press an ear to the door, straining to hear what my parents were saying. Would they send me away? To that place?
“I’ll never let it happen,” I assured myself. I would die before I’d go to a place where I was literally stripped of myself.
For the next few years, the games continued, and although there were always doctors and threats, I kept myself just alive enough to stay out of that particular treatment center.
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Flash-forward almost forty years, and today, my father is an old man with dementia.
As the Universe sometimes works in strange ways, I am now one of his primary caretakers. Although our relationship was strained for many years and I missed out on the experience of having a strong male figure in my life that I could trust, he did walk me down the aisle, and I am here for him now that he needs help.
My father doesn’t remember that day that will forever be burned into my brain. He doesn’t remember the hell I went through the years that followed—the fear, the insecurities, the isolation, and the self-inflicted bruises I sported because I hated myself so very much. More than anything, he was, and is, clueless of the real battle scars—the ones that lay deep inside.
He doesn’t know that that one “unremarkable fall day” when he pulled me from school started a negative spiral in my life, a time when I began aligning with damaging beliefs and inflicting self-harm.
All he knows now is what his dementia allows him to—if the sun is out, if the squirrels ate the peanuts he tossed to them, and whether or not I am there to help him; to deliver his groceries, to take him out on drives, and to care for him.
Yes, this could easily be the ultimate story of revenge, but years of teaching and practicing yoga have brought me down a different path.
The path I have chosen is the path of letting go.
Truthfully, my father’s dementia has left me no choice but to let go, at least of some parts of my life. I’ve needed to let go of expectations, of attachments to the outcome, and even, sometimes, like in those moments when he calls me “Sally,” my own name and identity.
But in letting go, I have found that his disease has brought some gifts as well. I’ve learned to slow down and appreciate the daisy he wants to admire, the flock of chickadees darting in and out of a bush he’s watching, and the feel of the cool fall air on my face as I help him to and from a doctor’s appointment.
Letting go has allowed me to experience all those things that I was previously too busy to appreciate. As Helen Keller said, “There is beauty in everything, even in silence and darkness.”
But letting go because of his dementia wasn’t enough.
I had to let go for me, too.
To let go of the toxic weight from the past, I released that moment when everything changed, all those years ago.
How? By simply deciding to put the weight down—and not just with regard to that event, but in all aspects of my life.
Was it easy? No. But it was doable.
In letting go, I didn’t worry about forgiving (although it is an important step for healing), or seeing someone else’s perspective. I simply unhanded my tight grip on all the “wrongs” I had endured and still carried with me, as well as all those things for which I blamed myself.
Every one of us will live through events, some that we consider positive, and others, not. The only control we have is in how we deal with the circumstances we’ve been given.
We can choose not to shoulder the burden, and to unpack those weights we’ve been carrying. We can close our eyes, breathe deeply, and tell ourselves, “I will put that weight down.”
That’s where our true power lies.
Have I forgotten my past? Of course not. But I have let it go, and in letting go, I have reclaimed an important relationship with my father, and more importantly, with myself.
By letting go, I have released my suffocating grip on life, and reclaimed my personal power.
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Stop Waiting for Perfection and Fall in Love with Your Life Now
I know, so cliché, right? I can practically hear your eyes roll. But hear me out.
In a society driven by results, achievements, and ideals of perfection, there is a huge pitfall that I am becoming increasingly aware of—that we can be so focused on trying to achieve our “best life” that life itself could pass us by and we would have missed it. Missed the beauty of just being here.
We’ve all heard the sayings “Slow down and smell the roses” and “Life is a journey, not a destination.” We hear these sayings and pass them off as embroidery on a quaint pillow, but what if we didn’t? What if life really is in the details?
I mean, how many of us will ever actually attain the “perfect life” we are being sold? Are we just trapped in never-ending, self-defeating cycles of diets, bad habits, and perpetual “self-improvement”?
What if we just paused for a second. Took a break from social media. Blocked out all the outside noise. Just got quiet. What would your inner voice, your subconscious, tell you?
What makes you truly happy? What feeds your soul? Makes you tick? Even reading that back I realize I sound very “new age,” but what I mean is, aren’t we done with being told what will make us happy? And why does life have to be spectacular to be fulfilling? Can’t what we have just be enough?
Recently, I lost my dad after a very short and aggressive battle with cancer. I didn’t see it coming. I thought he would go on forever.
I had been estranged from my dad for a few years before he got sick. We had drifted apart for lots of reasons but mainly because he was never there for me. Our relationship was very one-sided and usually consisted of me running after him, wanting him to notice me, to give me the love and approval I so badly felt I needed from him.
He wasn’t any of the things a father should be. He wasn’t reliable or safe or protective or even present, and I resented him for abandoning me when I was little.
But when it came down to it, when I faced losing him, when I saw him in his hospital bed and he told me he “wasn’t long for this world,” all of that melted away and I longed desperately for more time.
I wish I had let go of my expectations, my resentment, and my pride and just accepted him and salvaged a relationship with him. I loved my dad, and I wish I had spent more time just being with him. Now, that time has passed.
His loss taught me something. Life is precious. We don’t have forever. We have now. This moment. We can choose to love our lives now.
Don’t wait until you’re skinner, prettier, fitter, earning more money, famous, a millionaire. (Most of us will never be those last two things.)
If your life is particularly hard right now and your needs aren’t being met, work to change what isn’t working. But don’t get so focused on what you want that you forget what you already have.
Let’s stop wasting the precious time we have here with the people we love, who make our life beautiful.
Appreciate all the little things that make you happy.
For me, it’s coffee shops and lazy mornings, walks by the river or in nature, grabbing lunch with my friends or dancing the night away, cuddles on the sofa, spending time with my kids, those few precious moments with my partner in the morning before the day begins.
These things are what make a life. While we are striving to “live our best life,” we run the real risk of completely missing the one we are already living.
My one wish is that we all wake up and start appreciating the life we have right now. That we reject the notion that we have to have perfect bodies, perfect faces, perfect houses, families, relationships, to have a truly happy life.
Wake up to the fact that we are being sold this lie purely so that we buy more stuff, work more hours, keep striving for the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Love your life now. Fall in love with all the little things. Happiness doesn’t come from physical possessions. It comes from appreciating everything money can’t buy. You could already be living your “best life” without even trying.
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How ‘Griefcations’ Helped Me Heal from Loss and How Travel Could Help You Too
“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” ~Danny Kaye
The brochure read, “Mermaid tail, optional.” What forty-something mom doesn’t have a shimmering fish tail tucked in her closet for just the right occasion? Not me. I live in Minnesota. I’d borrow one when I got there.
I took a flight from Minneapolis to Panama City, and then a water taxi to a backpackers’ resort. Not the kind with frozen cocktails and bad DJs. The next thing I knew, I was on a sailboat, swinging from an aerial circus hoop suspended over the sparkling Caribbean Sea, dressed as a mermaid.
I felt free and alive and playful in my body.
How did I, a grieving daughter, sister, and mother, end up there? That’s what I was asking myself. It’s both a long and short story.
After a few years marked by death and loss, an “aerial and sail” retreat called to me. It would be a gift to my wounded self. That’s the short take.
The longer explanation is the most painful, but probably speaks to why so many of us chase adventure or time away from our routines and responsibilities. We’ve got to work on ourselves outside of our regular lives. I certainly did.
After losing my dad to cancer and my brother to suicide within a span of six months, I then had to say goodbye to the daughter we’d made part of our family for four years. We thought we would adopt her, but she went to live with another family.
In my grief, I’ve redesigned my approach to life.
It’s grief that pulls me to say, “Yes, I’ll try that.” Travel. The flying trapeze. Mermaid tails.
An unexpected gift of grief is being cracked open and feeling the urgency of these opportunities. They are too fleeting and too precious to pass up. I’ve also embraced play and movement and taken up circus arts. The retreat offered some of the best aerial coaches out there.
But aside from honing a skill, I craved an escape from the underpinnings of my everyday life and the frequent reminders of my missing family.
Losing loved ones is something we will all experience, no doubt many times over. How each of us grieves is individual, but what I can say from experience—as a trauma psychologist and as someone living in grief—is that taking a journey out of one’s comfort zone can be profoundly healing.
A “griefcation” won’t cure the pain, but meaningful travels can help us cope, possibly even heal.
When I last Googled “griefcation,” it appeared just over 400 times on the search engine, with the earliest hits dated from 2017. That’s not a lot when you compare it to “staycation,” which appeared in more than 100 million articles. But I believe that travel is a conscious way to grieve that yanks us out of a funk of isolation and provides an opportunity for relief, insight, healing, peace, and transformation.
Travel forces us to be in the moment, hyper-aware of new surroundings as we read a map, find a hotel, hail a cab (or look for an uber), and mentally calculate currency exchanges. All of this is a welcome reprieve from the overthinking and overwhelm that comes with grief.
These days there are “grief cruises” and bereavement boats, with a chaplain on call. If you want to dip your toe into a travel experience, instead of fully diving in, retreats—mini-vacations, if you will—can be a good and less pricey alternative.
I’m living in grief, but I am also lucky and privileged to work for myself, with flexible time off and enough travel points accumulated from business trips to orbit the planet. For others, your grief vacation might be closer to home or shorter in duration.
I first sought out a short griefcation in the year after my dad and brother died. I had an urge to be with others who were grieving: those who would just know that I had no words for how I was feeling. I found a “Grief Dancer” retreat in Big Sur with a description that spoke to me: We invite you to a weekend retreat to hold together what should not be held alone.
I flew to San Francisco and then drove the Pacific Coast Highway to what I affectionately called a “hippie’s paradise,” where primal music, soulful rhythm, and unselfconscious dancing helped me find joy in judgment-free movement.
Ever since my dad and brother died, I’ve sought out places to travel, sometimes to escape traditions that now trigger me.
My dad loved the gaudy, over-the-top nature of Christmas celebrations and would string twinkly rainbow lights all over our house in southern California. He collected singing snowmen from Hallmark, too. He had a dozen of them. He’d terrorize us, his grown children, by switching them on all at once so they’d each sing a different Christmas carol, competing for cheery seasonal supremacy.
My dad died from cancer in November and after an early December memorial, my mom and my surviving brother retreated to our respective corners of the country to grieve alone. I hunkered down with my husband and two boys, hibernating in the dark cold of Minneapolis.
And just like that, my family stopped gathering for Christmas. In its absence, I’ve worked to build a new holiday tradition for my sons that has a travel experience at its core. We now routinely head to sunny beaches to relax, read books, play together, and create special moments to remember those we’ve lost. No matter where we find ourselves on Christmas Day, we always set a place at the table for my dad and brother.
I’ve learned that it’s possible to be living in grief, but also experience profound joy. Grief is an invitation to deeply value the moments of your life and find joy where you can, because of a renewed sense of how fleeting they are.
We can travel to escape our grief, or we can focus on our loss as a significant component of the travel experience, creating activities to honor the lives of those we’ve lost.
Dr. Karen Wyatt, a hospice physician and the founder of End-of-Life University Blog, has written extensively about the “safe container” that travel can provide to heal grief and loss. She defined six categories of grief travel to consider when making plans. Restorative. Contemplative. Physically active. Commemorative. Informative. Intuitive.
Before a significant grief anniversary, I took another retreat, this time to Morocco with my husband and other entrepreneurs, to experience “radical self-awareness while leaving our comfort zones in a wild, extraordinary place.” While I wasn’t there to grieve specifically, I am always on that journey. There, my experience—to borrow categories from Wyatt—was contemplative, intuitive, physically active, informative. And commemorative.
In the Sahara Desert near the border with Algeria, I honored the fourth anniversary of the death of my dad. It was a day of beauty and reflection. The shifting sand was a meditation on the transient nature of life. The stark nature of the landscape was an affirmation that life is never guaranteed to be long, and survival is not assured.
The stunning beauty of the place, and the company I was with, was an invitation to honor the magic of this one “wild and precious life”—to borrow from poet Mary Oliver. It was both an embodied and soulful experience to dwell in grief. To hold in my body and spirit the importance of Dad’s memory. I grabbed handfuls of his ashes and sand and flung them into the air. Releasing. Weeping. Celebrating.
You can’t live every day like it’s your last—if I did, I’d be broke, exhausted, and probably in prison—but you can do what makes you truly happy as often as possible.
Travel, like grief, takes you to different lands, where life seems more precious and urgent. If you’re lucky, you will find joy amid the sadness, as I did. The memories stay with you forever.
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The Power of Waiting When You Don’t Know What to Do
“Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal.” ~I Ching
Waiting has a bad rap in modern Western society. It’s not surprising that I had to look to an ancient Chinese text (the I Ching) in order to find a suitable quote to begin this article. We don’t like to wait! It’s far easier to find quotes on the Internet about “seizing the day” and making something happen.
I’ve been an impatient person for much of my life. I wanted things to happen to me! I had a definite agenda in my twenties: finish college, start my career, get married, and have a family. So I declared a major and started knocking off my goals. When it was “time” to get married, I picked the most suitable person available and got on with it.
I really didn’t know much about waiting. I thought it was something you did if you didn’t have courage or conviction. It was just an excuse not to take action. I know better now.
What I’ve learned since then is that waiting is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating the life we want.
The ego, or mind, is very uncomfortable with waiting. This is the part of you that fairly screams, “Do something! Anything is better than nothing!” And, because we are a very ego-driven society, you’ll find plenty of external voices that back up that message.
The mind hates uncertainty, and would rather make a mistake than simply live in a state of “not knowing” while the right course unfolds.
There’s a term I love that describes this place of uncertainty: liminal. A liminal space is at the border or threshold between possibilities. It’s a place of pure potential: we could go any direction from here. There are no bright lights and obvious signs saying “Walk this way.”
Liminal spaces can be deeply uncomfortable, and most of us tend to rush through them as quickly as possible.
If we can slow down instead, the landscape gradually becomes clearer, the way it does when your eyes adjust to a darkened room. We start to use all of our senses. The ego wants a brightly lit super-highway to the future, but real life is more like a maze. We take one or two steps in a certain direction, and then face another turning point. Making our way forward requires an entirely different set of skills, and waiting is one of the most important!
There’s a proper timing to all things, and it’s often not the timing we want (now—or maybe even yesterday). There are things that happen on a subconscious level, in ourselves and in others, that prepare us for the next step. Oddly, when the time to act does come, there’s often a sense of inevitability about it, as if it was always meant to be this way.
Look back over your life and you’ll see this pattern. First, look at the decisions that you forced: how did those turn out? Then look for times when you just “knew” what to do, without even thinking about it. What happened then?
The key to the second kind of decision is waiting for that deep sense of inner knowing.
That doesn’t mean you’re certain that everything will turn out exactly the way you want it. Or that you don’t feel fear. But there is a sense of “yes, now’s the time” in your body that I liken to the urge that migratory birds get when it’s time to leave town. They don’t stand around debating whether to go, consulting maps and calendars. They just go when the time is right.
We’re animals too—we have and can cultivate that inner sensitiveness that lets us simply know what to do when the time is right. But to do that we have to unhook from the mind. Thinking is useful up to a point, but we usually take it far beyond the point of usefulness!
We go over and over various options, trying to predict the future based solely on our hopes and fears.
We talk endlessly with others about what we should do, hoping that they have the answers for us (and, ideally, trying to get everyone to agree).
We think about what we “should” do, based on any number of external measures: common sense, morality, religion, family values, finances, and so on.
And then usually we add this all up and just take our best shot.
A better way is to take stock of what you know (and, even more importantly, what you don’t know) and then… wait.
If there’s some action that calls to you, even if it’s seemingly unrelated to the question at hand, do it! Then wait again for another urge to move. Wait actively rather than passively. That means: keep your inner senses tuned to urges or intuitions. Expect that an answer will come. As the I Ching says, wait with the “inner certainty of reaching the goal.”
This is not the same kind of dithering and procrastination that come when we want to try something new but are afraid to step out into the unknown. If your intuition is pulling you in a certain direction and your mind is screaming at you to “Stop!” by all means ignore your mind.
There’s a subtle but very real difference between the feeling of fear (which holds you back from doing something you long to do) and misgivings (which warn you that a decision that looks good on the surface is not right for you).
In both cases, look for and trust that deep sense of inner knowing, even if your thoughts are telling you different. A friend once told me that her father’s best piece of advice to her was: “Deciding to get married should be the easiest decision of your life.” How I wish I had known that when I made my own (highly ambivalent) decision!
My head was telling me that this was the sensible thing to do, and he was a good man. My gut, however, was far from on board. I still vividly recall the many inward debates I held about whether to marry him, and even the dreams I had that revealed my inner reluctance. Unfortunately, I went with my thoughts over my instincts.
Now I know this: If you have to talk yourself into something, try waiting instead. More will be revealed, if you give it some time.
Ignore that voice in your head that says you need to make a decision now. Don’t rush through life. Linger in the liminal spaces and see what becomes clear as you sit with uncertainty. Learn to trust your gut more than your head. Have faith that the right course will unfold at the perfect time. And then, when the time comes, just do it, as simply and naturally as the birds take flight.
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Everything I’m So, So Sorry About (and Why I Think Apologies Are Hard)
“There’s the way that light shows in darkness, and it is extremely beautiful. And I think it essentializes the experience of being human, to see light in darkness.” ~Emil Ferris
I was leading a yoga training in a small village in Greece near the Aegean Sea. One of the trainees was practicing a mindfulness workshop she designed. She led us through a guided meditation based on a beautiful Hawaiian practice for reconciliation and forgiveness called Ho’oponopono. As we sat in the yoga space, she repeated over and over:
I love you.
Please forgive me.
I’m sorry.
Thank you.There was something about how she slowly said, “I’m so, so sorry” that at one point I felt my heart break open, and tears flowed from its depths.
I have a wellspring of personal and societal hurts tucked in the back of my heartspace that I am so, so sorry about.
I’m sorry that children and animals are abused for no reason except the amusement or the sickness of adults.
I’m sorry that women and children are molested and raped by men whose brains can’t process compassion, and that their need for power is so destructive that they can justify their actions.
I’m sorry that people aren’t given equal access to food, education, and healthcare because of the color of their skin or biases.
I’m sorry for the learned bias that keep us from treating everyone equally.
I’m sorry that children don’t tell adults they have been bullied and base their self-worth on their shame about how their peers treated them.
I’m sorry for daughters whose mothers try to keep them small.
I’m sorry for the boys who’ve been told that they can’t cry.
I’m sorry that saying sorry is sometimes too vulnerable.
I’m sorry for any time I have ever said or done something that was hurtful because I was trying to make myself look good.
I’m so, so sorry
The Vulnerability of Being Sorry
Saying I’m sorry is a vulnerable place. We have to admit that we were not perfect. We have to disclose that we made mistakes.
Sometimes I’ve raced around my brain desperately looking for some way to justify my actions so that I didn’t have to apologize because it felt too vulnerable. But sometimes, even in a relationship where I wanted to be vulnerable and close to someone, I have defaulted to not apologizing—sometimes out of habit.
During the pandemic, I came down with COVID-19 and had to call the people I’d been around and tell them. It was hard. One of my friends was very upset with me. It was during the holidays, and after spending a lot of time alone, she had plans for New Year’s Eve.
I didn’t blame her for being mad. The isolation was driving us all crazy. I was sorry. Apologizing and listening to her anger was uncomfortable. Her friendship was more valuable than the temporary discomfort of her processing her disappointment. I was grateful that I had the courage to be present.
If we want a relationship to grow, we—the one who erred—need to own the mistake and the apology, no matter how uncomfortable it feels. Without the apology, it’s one more brick in the barrier to growing closer in a relationship.
We all know people that never say I’m sorry—it just feels too exposed. Alternatively, more worrisome, is that they feel beyond reproach.
Cindy Frantz, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory, said that when we do something wrong and skirt responsibility by not admitting our wrongdoing, the interaction feels incomplete.
I know from experience that waiting for an apology can cause a relationship to feel like it is hanging in midair, waiting to get grounded.
She also warned, “Don’t apologize as a way to shut down the conversation and wipe the slate clean. That’s a shortcut that won’t work.”
When It Isn’t Safe to Say I’m Sorry
Some people will use our apology against us—so we keep ourselves safe by not apologizing. Self-preservation might be the best choice when dealing with someone with mental health and abusive issues. It can take a toll on how we feel about ourselves though.
In the eighties, I was in a twelve-step program for my eating disorder. I wasn’t able to fully complete the fifth step by making amends to my parents for all the extra food I ate to fuel my bulimia. It just didn’t feel safe. Now that I’m in my sixties I could do it, but my parents are deceased.
I found some comfort in apologizing “in spirit.” I’m still in the process of fully letting go of the conversation that I wish I could have had.
Over-Apologizing
I was in a coffee house, writing this article, when I overheard a conversation. A man asked a woman if he could reach across her to get a chess board from a shelf that was next to her. She said yes and then said, “I’m sorry.” His friend said to her, “Why are you apologizing? He’s the one inconveniencing you.”
Like this woman, I can be very free with my apologies.
Saying things like “I’m sorry to bother you” instead of “Do you have a minute to talk?” can be a sign of our sense of self-worth or the habits we developed when we weren’t confident.
Findings show that women report offering more apologies than men, even though there is no evidence that women create more offenses than men.
For women, over-apologizing can be just a matter of learned language. But when we hear ourselves apologize for taking up space when someone else bumps into us, or apologize for being late rather than thanking people for waiting for us, or apologize just for saying no when someone crosses our boundaries, this can be a sign of self-worth challenges.
If we listen to ourselves apologize repeatedly, we literally talk ourselves into low self-worth.
What a Sincere Apology Feels Like
I can offer a sincere apology when I know the mistakes I make are just a part of being human. I truly don’t want to hurt others. I don’t want them to be suffering from my words or actions.
I can offer a sincere apology when I forgive myself for not being perfect. I seek to learn from my mistakes and apply insights to my future responses and actions. I refrain from using my mistakes to bring up all my past mistakes and emotionally beat myself up.
Psychotherapist Sara Kubric says that a genuine apology is more than a statement. It has to be sincere, vulnerable, and intentional. She offers an apology recipe that could look something like:
- Taking responsibility for making a mistake
- Acknowledging that we have hurt someone
- Validating their feelings
- Expressing remorse
- Being explicit about our desire to make amends
Apology as a Test of Confidence
When I sincerely apologize, I know that I am confident. No one is beyond making mistakes. I know that my spiritual growth depends on my ability to be vulnerable.
I continue to learn new ways of communicating that don’t involve over-apologizing for taking up space or being a normal human being. I know that there are pain, challenges, and injustices in the world that I can’t control, and I can be sorry, sad, and discouraged when they happen. This is the way I can live consciously and compassionately in this, my community.
