How Strong You Are
How I Healed My Body and My Life by Embracing My Sensitivity
“I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am.” ~Caitlin Japa
“You’re making people uncomfortable,” my mother would say. “Stop being so sensitive,” she would then quip.
I have always been sensitive for as long as I can remember. Now I understand there’s a name for it: highly sensitive person (HSP).
The scientific term is sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). As it turns out, 15-20% of the population has this trait.
As a highly sensitive person, my nervous system filters less …
The Wind That Shakes Us: Why We Need Hard Times
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~William Arthur Ward
I live in the windiest city in the world—Wellington, New Zealand. Perched between the North and South Island, this colorful little city gets hammered by wind. The winds from the south bring cold, and the winds from the northwest seem to blow forever. My body is regularly under assault. But amid all that blustering lies the answer to one of life’s great questions: How do we feel at home in the wind? Or better phrased, how do we live with …
FREE Online Event for Women: Get Unstuck, Find Passion & Purpose
Do you ever feel like you’re not doing even a fraction of what you could be doing with your life? I’m guessing we’ve all felt like that since the start of the pandemic. But did you feel like that before—like you have gifts to share and passions to explore, but you just don’t know how, or where to start?
Or maybe you want to believe you have gifts, but you question yourself. You dismiss your potential. And as a result, you hold yourself back.
I suspect most people struggle with these feelings at one point or another.
I felt …
Why Highly Sensitive People Make Amazing Life Partners
“Our relationships are a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.” ~Iyanla Vanzant
Looking back at my life I see that all of my romantic relationships up until now suffered because I didn’t recognize or value my sensitivity.
For much of my life I thought there was something wrong with me. I was too quiet, too shy, not interesting enough in group settings, too easily hurt, too easily overwhelmed and stressed. I judged myself for being irritable when I didn’t feel rested. I was easily bored with surface conversation and craved deep intimacy, but thought maybe that was …
Why I Hate Getting My Hopes Up and What Happened the One Time I Did
“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.” ~Oprah Winfrey
When I was a little girl, I made many wishes. At first, I believed all of my wishes would come true, just like in the fairy tales my mother read to me before bed. However, slowly but surely, life changed my attitude, stole my optimism, and I stopped wishing.
My parents fought a lot, and their unhappiness made me believe that I was not good enough. Poverty replaced my birthday wishes with socks, the bible, and sheets for my bed.
When my parents …
The Grief We Can’t Run from and Why We Should Embrace It
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Grief creeps up on you when you least expect it. It reminds you of the person you have lost when you’re out for coffee with friends, watching people hug their loved ones goodbye at the airport, and when you’re at home thinking about people you should call to check-in on.
Even when you think that enough time has passed for you to be over it, grief pulls at your heartstrings. You think about all the ways that life …
Afraid of What People Think? Free Yourself by Realizing How Unimportant You Are
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
It’s natural to think that we’re always in the spotlight.
We think that people care about the way we dress, but they don’t.
We think that people notice our nervous habits, when in reality, they’re worried about whether people are noticing their own.
We tend to go through life as if our every move is being watched, judged, and evaluated on a moment-to-moment basis by the people around us. Here’s a reality check—you’re not that important.
I don’t mean that …
Why Feeling Anxiety Was the Key to My Happiness
“Lean into the discomfort of the work.” ~ Brené Brown
Anxiety was the core of my existence for decades.
When I look back at my life over that time, what comes to mind first is the constant tension in my chest, a knotted stomach, and a lump in my throat.
From the outside, my life looked great. I was college-educated, had a good job, was in a relationship; I lived in a nice place, had a decent car, and enough money to buy organic food and a gym membership.
But I was miserable.
Not only was I anxious all the …
Discovering Pleasure in Movement Instead of Exercising from Fear
“The choice that frees or imprisons us is the choice of love or fear. Love liberates. Fear imprisons.” ~Gary Zukav
I come from a family of runners. When I was a young girl, my father would rouse us out of bed on the weekends to run the three-mile par-course at the local park, competing with my siblings for who could do the most sit-ups at the stations along the route. We would end the event with a bunch of chocolate eclairs from the local 7-11 as a reward.
As benign as this story may be, it describes a pattern of …
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