Thoughts Are Automatic, They Just Happen
How My Trauma Led Me to the Sex Industry and What’s Helping Me Heal
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi
The hardest battle I’ve fought is an ongoing one. It’s an all-consuming shadow of dread that never leaves, only resting long enough for me to catch my breath.
I know what it feels like to be depressed. I know the feeling of pain and hopelessness so well it almost feels like home.
I remember being around eleven years old and thinking, wow, this all seems so meaningless. I had become awakened by my consciousness and overwhelmed by emptiness. I knew then that there was more to life than …
The Secret to Eternal Youth: How to Feel Excited About Life Again
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ” ~Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart
I am forty-nine years old, and I’ve never felt so young in my life. Many people my age feel old. Many people younger than I am feel old, while many people who are older than I am still feel young.
What makes someone feel …
Toxic Positivity: 10 Things Not to Say When Someone Is Feeling Down
“When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.” ~Unknown
It’s hard and uncomfortable to sit with pain, our own or someone else’s.
We don’t like to see people hurting, especially people we love, because we instinctively want to make them feel better, and we feel powerless if we think we can’t.
We feel like we have to do something. We have to say something. We have to somehow pull them out of the darkness—and we often try to do this by dousing them with light.
We do this to ourselves as well, …
Addiction Is Messy, But These Things Help Me Stay Clean
“Staying sober really was the most important thing in my life now and had given me direction when I thought I had none.” ~Bradley Cooper
I remember that exact feeling of shame that washed over me when I was filling Yeti water bottles with 100 proof vodka instead of water. Then I chugged it, all while knowing it was the worst idea. Yet, I couldn’t stop.
Addiction is messy.
My social outings were with the wealthiest in the town, always with plenty of other alcoholics in my midst. I surrounded myself with people who drank like me because why on …
How I Stopped Carrying the Weight of the World and Started Enjoying Life
“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” ~Najwa Zebian
During a personal development course, one of my first assignments was to reach out to three friends and ask them to list my top three qualities. It was to help me see myself the way others saw me.
At the time, my confidence was low and I couldn’t truly see myself. I didn’t remember who I was or what I wanted. The assignment was a way to rebuild my self-esteem and see myself from a broader perspective.
As I vulnerably asked and then received the responses, …
5 Ways to Use Movement (Not Exercise) to Support Your Mental Health
“Nothing is more revealing than movement.” ~Martha Graham
It seems like only yesterday that I was at home with a newborn, a kindergartener, two dogs, and a husband who, just like me, was working from home, when we were thrown into the unthinkable COVID19 pandemic.
It didn’t take long for the stress and tension to build in my body. The feeling of instability, uncertainty, and fear, not to mention the post-partum anxiety, took its toll on my body as it became more rigid, bound, immobile, and frozen.
All the ways I had relied on movement as exercise were taken away, …
Make “None of My Business” Your Mantra
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How to Release the Fear That Holds You Back and Keeps You Small
“The purpose of fear is to raise your awareness, not to stop your progress.” ~Steve Maraboli
I used to hate my fear because it scared me. It terrified me that when fear arose, it often felt like it was driving me at full speed toward the edge of a cliff.
And if I were driven off a cliff, I would lose all control, all function, perhaps I would collapse, perhaps I would shatter into a million pieces. I was never totally clear on the details of what would happen if I let the fear get out of control. That’s …
My Second Mother: When Someone Steps Up Like Family Never Did
We are all blessed with two birth parents, and if we are lucky one or two of those are positive role models and on board for at least some portion of our lives. If we are really lucky, we may have the good fortune to score another mom or dad figure, someone who appears virtually out of nowhere, as fate or serendipity might have it, and takes us under their propitious wing.
Such a thing happened to me in the form of a bright, spunky, and emotionally generous woman named Joanie Arnesty, who helped me through the veil of darkness …
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