You’re Doing the Best You Can


“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” ~Alan Watts
When I started kicking chairs at work, I knew things had gone too far.
I didn’t kick things when other people were around, and I thought it was the perfect way to release my anger. I could lash out with as much fury as I wanted, but I didn’t hurt anyone.
Why did I start kicking chairs? I’ll explain in a minute. But the truth was, I was hiding a bigger problem: I’ve spent much of my life …

“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 …

“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 …

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~Carl Jung
Three years ago I was on top of the world after realizing I had fallen in love with my best friend. Relationships this rare are beautiful, until one vital piece of them breaks down: clear communication.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, when my ex and I came together as a couple, rather than being in love, we were both just mirroring each other’s deep unconscious pain; his mother had walked out on him at a young age, and …

“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 …