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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 …

Filter All Criticism Into Two Mental Folders

Get the full 30-Day Take Your Power Back Challenge here! And get Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal here.

Sometimes All You Can Do Is Make Peace with It

This Isn’t Healthy Love

Moments That Aren’t Ours to Keep

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, …

The Words You Keep Convincing Yourself Not to Say

Get the full 30-Day Take Your Power Back Challenge here! And get Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal here.

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 …

Starting Over Needn’t Mean Something Drastic

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, …

Celebrate How Far You’ve Come

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

Get the full 30-Day Take Your Power Back Challenge here! And get Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal here.

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 …

Something That Makes You Feel Good Today

If You Can’t Be Yourself Around a Person

Coping with the Grief of a Layoff: 5 Tips If You’re Looking for a Job

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” ~Seneca

We are in such a hard season of the economy, and the implications of people getting laid off are so real and unfortunately painful.

No matter how competent or qualified you are, the job search process is hard. And even when you know your layoff was due to reasons completely outside your control, it still hurts.

The fear, instability, and uncertainty about what your next job will be or when it will come to fruition are emotionally unsettling, and our collective toxic positivity conditioning isn’t always helpful.

Yes, it’s true …

“Old” Isn’t a Bad Word: The Beauty of Aging (Gracefully or Not)

“Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one.” ~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver

As an adolescent, I was always keen on looking and acting older than my age.

As the youngest amongst three, I always felt that my siblings held more power and their grown up lives seemed more glamorous to me. They would prance off …

This Moment Is Not Life Waiting to Happen