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How I Stopped Making Men My Everything and Losing Myself in Love

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Yes, love is all about sacrifice and compromise, but it’s important also to establish a limit. You shouldn’t have to throw your whole life away to make a relationship work. If you have to lose yourself to please your partner, you’re with the wrong person.” ~Beau Taplin

When I was twenty, I fell in love with a man who became my everything. My close friends watched me becoming someone else because I found myself trying to ceaselessly knead myself into someone who would perfectly fit into this man’s world, even if it meant betraying myself in the process.

I changed …

People Don’t Fake Depression

By in Fun & Inspiring

How to Spot Abusive People and Stop Getting into Toxic Relationships

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

When it comes to dating, I have always been drawn to people who made me work for their love and validation. Despite the fact that I, like anyone else, wish to be with somebody that loves and supports me, I have always somehow managed to attract the opposite.

My relationship history has been fraught with rejection, feeling unworthy, and trying harder to win love and approval. Every time I felt criticized or undervalued, I would look inward and ask myself what I could do to make my …

Whatever Is Harming You, Leave It

By in Fun & Inspiring

The Simple Path to a More Fulfilling, Far Richer Life

By in Blog, mindfulness & peace

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” ~Seneca

Many of us say we want a simpler life, but we don’t make any changes because that would require us to make hard choices that go against the flow. We say we want to be less busy and enjoy more of our days, but it feels easier to do what everyone else is doing, even if …

How to Embrace Your Sensitivity and See It as a Strength

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Sensitive people feel so deeply they often have to retreat from the world, in order to dig beneath the layers of pain to find their faith and courage.” ~Shannon L. Alder

Being a highly sensitive person can be rough in a world full of agendas, processes, rules, and numbers. Feelings and senses, being intangible and invisible, are often dismissed because not everyone experiences them in the same way. The intensity of those experiences varies, as well, depending on the individual, which makes it all the more confusing.

Living in a society all about speed and efficiency, feelings can often be …

Emotionally Numb and Physically Disconnected? DDD May Be the Problem

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Of all things, it would seem, make friends with depersonalization. Enemies within consciousness never work, and only escalate the problem. Befriend it, consider it part of life to work with it. We can’t expel it or cancel it. When we try, the pressure makes a volcano out of it. This is true of so many things, it must be true of DDD too.” ~David Hench

Do you ever feel like you’re not feeling anything, although you know that you have feelings? That you’re operating on autopilot, more like a robot than a living person? That your self is hiding …

Some Days I Can Conquer the World

By in Fun & Inspiring

The World Is Not My Enemy – Why I’m Trying to Let My Guard Down

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the centre of meaningful human experiences” ~Brené Brown

From a young age I learned that the world is not a safe place—that there are bullies out there that want to harm me and that I have to watch my back. I developed defense mechanisms in order to protect myself, or perhaps those mechanisms had been there all along, programmed into my psychology by millions of years of evolution.

Maybe these mechanisms served me in certain situations as they did my ancestors; telling me when to fight and when to run away. But as I …

How Could You Think You Are Weak?

By in Fun & Inspiring

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

By in Blog, change & challenges

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

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

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

At this point I should probably …

If You’re Being Told to “Just Get Over It and Cover Up”

By in Fun & Inspiring

Don’t Fake It Til You Make It

By in Fun & Inspiring

How Meeting and Re-Parenting My Inner Child Helped Me Love Myself

By in Blog, change & challenges, love & relationships

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” ~Oscar Wilde

The journey to meeting, loving, and re-parenting my inner child was a long time coming.

In 2018, I went through a devastating breakup. I’d been through breakups before. They suck, they hurt, some of them left me in deep abysses of sadness for a long time, but this one was something different.

I can honestly say I felt levels of pain I did not know were survivable for a human being. Many days, I did not want to survive; I couldn’t imagine continuing to be in that …

A Life Full of Favorites: The True Essence of Minimalism

By in Blog, letting go

“Happiness can only be found if you free yourself from all other distractions.” ~Saul Bellow

What was your favorite toy as a child? Mine was a Spider-Man action figure. The limbs were adjustable, and there was a switch on his back that made his eyes light up.

I played with that toy for years, even after his fingers broke off and his switch got stuck. While I had plenty of toys as a child, this is the one I remember best.

Maybe you notice a similar trend in your own children. According to a study conducted by British researchers, the …

You’re Not a Failure, Keep Going

By in Fun & Inspiring

What No One Tells You About Setting Boundaries: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

By in Blog, love & relationships

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~Rumi

Three years back was the first time I dared to set a boundary and be assertive in a friendship, and guess what? She blocked me off her phone, and we stopped being friends.

It came as a rude shock because I was quite invested in the friendship. Not only did we have good times together, I had helped her search and find a job and even babysat her kid for a long while free of charge. I felt betrayed …

Until It’s My Turn

By in Fun & Inspiring

How I’m Winning Over My Inner Critic by Letting It Exist

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Winning the war of words inside your soul means learning to defy your inner critic.” ~Steven Furtick

We all have that voice in our head, the voice that’s always negative about ourselves. Our inner voice.  Our inner critic.

The one that tells us we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough. That voice that continuously compares us to other people, so we come up lacking and feeling less than.

Sometimes that voice is our own. Other times, and for some people, maybe those of us who have felt unloved or disliked by a significant person in our …

What I Really Mean When I Say I’m Fine (Spoiler: I’m Not)

By in Blog, change & challenges

“Tears are words that need to be written.” ~Paulo Coelho

It was lovely to see you today. I haven’t seen you in such a long time. So much has happened since the last time we saw each other.

You asked me how I was. I politely replied, “I’m fine” and forced a smile that I hoped would be believable. It must have worked. You smiled back and said, “I’m so glad to hear that. You look great.”

But I’m not really fine. I haven’t been fine for a very long time, and I wonder if I will ever know what …