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Category “change & challenges”

Healing After an Affair: How to Get Through the Pain of Infidelity

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“I will breathe. I will think of solutions, I will not let my worry control me. I will not let my stress level break me. I will simply breathe. And it will be okay. Because I don’t quit.” ~Shayne McClendon

It was a Wednesday afternoon in late July, and I felt like my entire world was coming to an end. My husband of almost eleven years had become distant, and during a phone call on my lunch break he told me he couldn’t do this anymore. That evening he told me he no longer loved me and wanted a divorce…

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

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

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

Okay, so it’s unanimous. We all prefer the good, happy feelings. I expect we are all experts at finding ways to avoid the uncomfortable ones. But …

Healing from Depression: It Begins With Asking for Help

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“I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.” ~Leonard Cohen

Right before my eighteenth birthday, when I was about to go to university, I was hit by a car and sustained multiple fractures to my right leg. This led to a couple of operations and the best part of ten months with me unable to walk.

While all of my school friends and peers were having the time of their lives in …

One Simple Word That Can Change Your Life (And No, It’s Not “Thanks”)

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“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” ~Epictetus

About nine years back I was at the lowest point of my life.

We had been trying to start a family for close to four years by that point.

The forty-plus consecutive months of “not pregnant” verdict were starting to take their toll on me. That second line on the pregnancy test strip seemed like it would never appear. Life felt like it was a never-ending cycle of false hope that was always crushed in the end.

I wouldn’t wish that kind of despair on …

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

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

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

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

I …

7 Lessons to Remember When Life Seems to Suck

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“I’m grateful for past betrayals, heartaches, and challenges… I thought they were breaking me; but they were sculpting me.” ~Steve Maraboli

I winced in pain as I climbed off the elliptical. This was one of the few times that I had ever set foot into a gym. And it was out of necessity rather than choice.

That necessity came from chronic lower back and leg pain, which I had been living with for the better part of six months. At the time, I didn’t know it would end up being just chronic, idiopathic pain.

All I knew was that it …

Dealing with Rejection: It Doesn’t Mean That You’re Not Good Enough

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“The best way out is always through” ~Robert Frost

I was trembling as I hung up the phone. He’d dumped me.

It was as if, while I was watching a murder mystery at the edge of my seat, the electricity had gone out. Poof! I wasn’t going to get to see the end of the movie, and I had no control over when the lights would come back on.

I felt the fangs of rejection sink into my heart like a merciless tarantula. My mind, which is normally going 500 miles an hour, came to a halt. Suddenly I felt …

Coping with Suicide Loss: 9 Lessons for Hope and Healing

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“It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ~Marianne Williamson

“That boy is one in a million, Jill. He’s one in a million.”

These were my grandfather’s words to my mum about my brother, Mitch, when he was just a kid. He really was one in a million—a light that shone so bright as a child and early teen, only to then fade into shadows of desperation and defeat as he grew into adulthood.

No one really knows what’s going …

Trying to Change Your Life? 6 Reminders to Help You Keep Going

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“You can’t change what’s going on around you until you start changing what’s going on within you.” ~Zig Ziglar

When you’re studying for eighteen years to have a chance at a better future, you’re not expecting to end up wearing yellow gloves and washing dishes, right? But what if I tell you that it made me happier than a job sitting behind a desk at a renowned institution?

You might be thinking now, “If this post is about how to change from a job behind a desk to one behind a sink, I better not waste my time reading it.” …

When Fear and Panic Win: How to Deal with Anxiety

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“Anxiety happens when you think you have to figure out everything all at once. Breathe. You’re strong. You got this. Take it day by day.” ~Karen Salmansohn

As much as I believe that you can move through fear to do whatever it is that you want to do, sometimes fear wins.

Sometimes, try as you might, you can’t push yourself forward. You retreat, worn, battle scarred, banged up, and with your tail between your legs.

You wave your white flag. You surrender.

Fear wins.

But it is in this moment of loss that you can learn some very important things.…

Gratitude: The Antidote for Painful Feelings and Fuel for Happiness

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“The struggle ends when the gratitude begins.” ~Neale Donald Walsch

The longer I travel on my journey, the more I realize that gratitude is the universal antidote to painful feelings. In fact, it’s the quickest route I know to happiness, which makes it a good idea to be grateful all day long.

However, when we are in a low mood or something knocks us off course, it can be easy to forget just how many amazing things there are in our lives to be grateful for, even just in one single day. It’s as if a setback erases our …

5 Reasons to Forgive Yourself and How to Do Better Going Forward

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“At the end of life, the wish to be forgiven is ultimately the chief desire of almost every human being. In refusing to wait; in extending forgiveness to others now; we begin the long journey of becoming the person who will be large enough, able enough and generous enough to receive, at the very end, that absolution ourselves.” ~David Whyte

The last time I saw my mother she was smiling and laughing at nothing in particular. My mother has had dementia for almost ten years now. Each visit brings an onslaught of guilt and uncomfortable feelings. Could I have …

Dealing with Postnatal Depression: It’s Okay to Ask for Help

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“The light at the end of the tunnel might seem a long way off. But the switch may be very near.” ~ Anonymous

When I think about it now, the ominous signs of postnatal depression were there even while I was pregnant.

What started with worries and anxieties would continue to escalate after the birth of my child, finally coming together like a perfect storm, to become a deep, dark depression that would threaten to take my life away from me.

Eighteen months after my daughter was born, now barely able to function, I found myself alone in the …

When Things Don’t Work Out: Who Knows If It’s Good or Bad?

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“It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.” ~Tony Robbins

I recently received a rejection letter for a voluntary role befriending and supporting a child in the care system. I was excited at the prospect of supporting a child who had likely been through a lot, and had been quietly confident that I would be great in the role.

After all, I am an emotionally responsible, fun-loving, deeply caring adult who had lived through a ton of difficulty: addiction and alcoholism (my own and my mother’s); growing up in …

It’s Okay to Cry

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“We need never be ashamed of our tears.” ~Charles Dickens

We have all cried, all of us, some more than others.

But today I am not here to divide us by the liters of tears we have shed.

Today I want to unite us because we are all the same.

We all feel sad, stressed, overwhelmed, scared, and frustrated at times.

Any stay-at-home parent would understand my frustration, my misery, and my overwhelmed days.

It has eaten me up on the inside. I have been staying at home for the past seven years, looking after my kids, with no face-to-face …

Why We Shouldn’t Rush or Feel Guilty About Emotional Pain

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“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

In July 2012, a conversation changed my life.

Prior to this, I had been struggling to right myself after a difficult loss. Several months had passed, yet I continued to revisit the same sad, angry place again and again. I believed the presence of these difficult emotions meant I was “doing it all wrong.”

I thought, if I could figure out why these feelings were so persistent, I could make them vanish altogether. To assist in the quest, I enlisted the help of …

Post-Traumatic Growth: How Pain Can Lead to Gain

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“When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. When life is bitter, say thank you and grow.” ~Shauna Niequist

It’s been over five years since the unexpected death of my oldest son. The first couple years were fraught with depression, despair, and a sense of hopelessness like I had never felt before. I even kept a notebook in my purse outlining the plan for how I would ultimately end my life.

It wasn’t until this past year that I told my friends about how close I had been to the edge. After outing myself, I found out they …

There’s Purpose in Pain and a Gift in Every Loss

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“There’s a bit of magic in everything and loss to even things out.” ~Lou Reed

Although I have spent years training myself to reverse my own anxiety, I have only left survival mode in the last couple of months, and am learning what that feels like and to be comfortable fully trusting that my children and I are taken care of.

I am at my goal of better than fine, but I’ve never been here before. And while I know my work is in the interim of where I’ll end up, I am learning to appreciate where I am in …

How to Speak to Someone About an Unspeakable Loss

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“It’s not about saying the right things. It’s about doing the right things.” ~Unknown

Years ago, my family and I moved to a bucolic little town in New Zealand, where we were immediately swept up into a group of ex-pats and locals. We felt deeply connected to this community by the time I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy in the local hospital.

When our son was three months old, a doctor heard a heart murmur. Twenty-four hours later, he died.

In the days and weeks that followed, I wandered in my own fog of grief as I went …

Why We Need to Stop Judging Our Feelings

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“Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It’s a system that’s supposed to move back and forth, between happy and unhappy. That’s how the system guides you through the world.” ~Daniel Gilbert

As a highly sensitive person I experience emotions very deeply, though it’s not usually obvious to others that I’m having such strong internal reactions.

For those not familiar with this trait, high sensitivity is not a defect or a personality flaw; it simply means that you experience sensory and emotional input more strongly than non-sensitive people.

Of course, this …