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Ending My Toxic Relationship with My Mother Was an Act of Self-Love

By in Blog, letting go, love & relationships

“It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

I was taught to love my family and to just accept the love they give. With the passage of time and the dawning of maturity, I began to doubt this kind of unquestioning love. The chronic emotional and mental stress …

5 Simple Ways to Overcome Your Mind’s Constant Judgments

By in Blog, letting go, love & relationships

“It’s easy to judge. It’s more difficult to understand. Understanding requires compassion, patience, and a willingness to believe that good hearts sometimes choose poor methods. Through judging, we separate. Through understanding, we grow.” ~Doe Zantamata

If you don’t live in a cave, you have probably noticed two things. First, there are a lot of annoying, incompetent, stupid, and very difficult folks living in this world. Second, assuming you agree with my previous sentence, you have a very judgmental mind.

For better or worse, you’re not alone. A hundred thousand years ago, the ability to judge people quickly helped our species …

Why I’d Rather Be Vulnerable with People Than Pretend I’m Perfect

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Give up being perfect, for being authentic. Give up the need to be perfect, for the opportunity to be authentic. Be who you are. Love who you are. Others will too.” ~Hal Elrod

I’m not perfect. Not that this would come as any kind of surprise to anyone who knows me. But I often feel pushed in the direction of trying to represent myself as someone who has it all together. Especially because of the nature of my work as a coach and facilitator. What about you? Do you ever feel like you’re putting on a show for others?

The …

Why I Despised My Skin Color & 5 Strategies That Improved My Self-Image

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships

“Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.” ~Coco Chanel

I believed I was ugly and blamed it on my dark skin. I hated my skin color. Looking back, I realized it’s because I didn’t fit in with the white kids, nor did I fit in with the black kids.

I am mixed race. I have a black father and a white mother. Until I started school, I never considered myself different. My family and I were close, and I felt love and acceptance.

When I started second grade, I developed a crush on a boy, who never noticed …

Healing After Heartbreak: How to Turn Your Pain into Your Greatest Superpower

By in Blog, letting go, love & relationships

“Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light.” ~Spike Milligan

Ever since I was a little girl, Disney films, story books, family, and friends unconsciously conditioned me to believe that the definition of happiness was a knight in shining armor galloping into my life to rescue me, sweeping me away, soothing all my problems as we ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after.

However, it’s fair to say, that fairytale didn’t play out how I’d expected in real life. Nor does it for most, if any of us.

For much of my teenage years, I …

Book Giveaway, HumanKind: Changing the World One Small Act at a Time

By in Blog, love & relationships

The other day, while scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across the kind of uplifting story that makes my exhausted-mom-bleeding-heart melt.

It was from a mother who’d decided to fly alone with her two-year-old and five-year-old, only to find herself overwhelmed by two screaming, overtired children.

I can imagine the stress and anxiety she felt, given that I often feel that way just sitting in my living room with my poor-sleeping baby and high-energy toddler—which is why I almost shed a tear when I read about the other moms who stepped up to offer help.

One fellow mama let …

Feeling Burnt Out? Meet Toxic Productivity & Grind Culture with Rest

By in Blog, change & challenges, healthy habits, letting go

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” ~Audre Lorde

When you hear the word “productive,” you likely think of something positive: busting through that work assignment, making your house sparkly clean, or crushing your hobby.

Productivity is what we all aim for, right? On workdays and even on our days off, we seek to make something happen.

Grinding and hustling are seen as admirable, and something to work toward, always.

If we fall short, we beat ourselves up, and sometimes even drag ourselves off the couch to force …

4 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief Since My Mom Died Suddenly

By in Blog, change & challenges, letting go, love & relationships

“Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.” ~Mariska Hargitay

At 6:07 pm on July 18, 2020, I was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend. It was a Saturday night, and I had canceled plans with my friends because I had a migraine. I had eaten dinner already, and I was in my pajamas, watching TV. My phone rang—my dad. “I’ll call …

Busy Mind Keeping You Up? How to Mindfully and Peacefully Drift Off to Sleep

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“I’ve always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.” ~David Benioff

I can feel the night converting into day. Hooting owls pass the baton to chirping birds before flying off into the slowly fading night. Low-grade panic sets in as total silence gives way to minor stirrings, and I realize my time to carve out at least a tiny patch of sleep amidst this mostly sleepless night is running out.

These …

Scared of Losing People You Love? How to Work through the Fear

By in Blog, letting go, love & relationships

“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” ~Joseph F. Newton

“Oh my God, Mom…” she said with a verbal eye roll.

“What?” I responded, sure that I had said too much or overshared like I normally do.

I can’t recall what my daughter and I were discussing openly about while standing in line at the grocery store checkout, but I do remember the girl ringing us up laughing and saying we sounded just like her and her mom.

I paused, unsure what that meant.

“Is this what a healthy mother/daughter relationship sounds like?” I questioned to myself. …

Tiny Buddha’s 2022 Day-to-Day Calendar & Planner, Available Now!

By in Blog

Hi friends! First things first, happy December. I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday season so far!

I’m excited to share that I’ve launched my first ever day-to-day desk calendar, along with an eco-friendly planner, for 2022.

The colorful daily calendar pages feature quotations (all from the Tiny Buddha blog) on happiness, love, relationships, change, meaning, mindfulness, simplicity, self-care, letting go, and more.

With an easel backer for desk and tabletop display, the calendar will hopefully keep you encouraged, uplifted, and motivated all through 2022!

As I write this, Amazon only has three calendars left in stock, with more …

Why I Stopped Measuring My Self-Worth and Trying to Prove Myself

By in Blog, letting go, mindfulness & peace

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone.” ~Maya Angelou

How do you measure your self-worth? By the salary you make each year? By the length of your resume? By the number of people who follow you on social media?

Now what if you never had to measure your self-worth again? That is what I want to do.

I grew up as a gifted kid with high expectations to boot, always pushing myself to meet them. I earned the best grades I could, secured a full-ride scholarship to a local university, and soon enough ended up …

Want to Help Someone Through Depression? Here Are a Few Things to Try

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships

“There were two classes of charitable people: one, the people who did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people who did a great deal and made no noise at all.” ~Charles Dickens

“It’ll be okay, just…”

If I could have taken that expression and thrown it at each person who said it to me when I was struggling with depression, it would have felt much better than hearing it each time.

Here are a few ways people ended that sentence:

“Try not to think about it.”

“Cheer up.”

“Get some exercise.“

“See someone …

How I Recognized My Fear of Failure and How I’m Mindfully Overcoming It

By in Blog, change & challenges, mindfulness & peace

“The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

My daughter began taking tumbling classes a week before her eighth birthday. She had been dancing since the age of three, and those classes included instructions for cartwheels and roundoffs. The harder stuff, like the back walkover, required tumbling or gymnastics classes, and she wanted the chance to be able to show …

Are You Highly Emotionally Reactive? You May Be Stuck in Survival Mode

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Survival mode is supposed to be a phase that helps save your life. It is not meant to be how you live.” ~Michele Rosenthal

Childhood is the most cherished time for many. However, nobody gets to adulthood unscathed. We all go through incidents with our friends, family, and at school or otherwise that leave us feeling emotionally bruised or scarred.

Growing up in a household where my parents were busy raising three kids and working hard to better their economic status, somewhere along the way I felt neglected. Not that they did anything intentionally, but I was often …

Put Down Your Phone: Why Presence Is the Best Gift You’ll Ever Give

By in Blog, love & relationships, mindfulness & peace

“When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

The only thing worse than not listening to someone is pretending to listen.

Giving the vague murmur of agreement, or a quick nod to communicate “Yes, I’m listening, totally,” when really, we’re not.

I remember vividly a dinner I had with friends about four years ago. I’d been backpacking in New Zealand for twelve months and had just returned to the UK. Traveling in the car to my friend’s house, I imagined how the night …

Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

By in Blog, love & relationships

“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” ~Umar Ibn Al Khattab

I don’t remember the exact day the message came through. It was from my son, Julian, and he needed to talk to me. It sounded pretty serious. He never really needs to talk to me.

His father was found dead earlier that week. He’d hung himself.

While this news hardly affected Julian at all, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I cried.

Our Marriage

We met in a taxi thirty-three years ago. He was the driver, …

How I Overcame My Chronic Digestive Issues by Learning to Breathe Right

By in Blog, healthy habits

“If you know the art of deep breathing, you have the strength, wisdom and courage of ten tigers.” ~Chinese adage

Let me share a little secret: I started healing from decades of debilitating chronic digestive issues when I stopped looking for the next best solution and trying to heal. Instead, I did nothing. And I took a breath.

Let’s start at the beginning. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease (an irritable bowel disease) at the age of eighteen, which would have marked the beginning of my oh-so-anticipated adult life, but instead, I thought my life was over.

I had every …

Please Don’t Fix Me: What True Empathy Is (And Isn’t)

By in Blog, love & relationships

“No one mentioned until I was in late middle age that—horribly!—my good, helpful ideas for other grown-ups were not helpful. That my help was in fact sometimes toxic. That people needed to defend themselves from my passionate belief that I had good ideas for other people’s lives. I did not know that help is the sunny side of control.”  ~Anne Lamott

I’m a well-meaning empath.

If you share your problems with me, I’ll quickly make them my own. I’ll listen intently, feel deeply, and want to help. I’ll give you advice and solutions you didn’t ask for, then be annoyed …

Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

By in Blog, change & challenges, work fulfillment

“Intuition is the whisper of the soul.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

“I can’t believe they are taking her side over mine. I gave this job so many years, and she decides to walk in and mess it all up for me,” I said to my husband.

A few years back, when I was working full time at my corporate job, I got into a disagreement with a team member. It spiraled out of control to the point where my boss then had to have a sit-down with us. I was so humiliated and angry that he could not see my side.

They …