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Posts tagged with “healing”

Giveaway and Interview: Turning Dead Ends into Doorways by Staci Boden

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Editor’s Note:

The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen:

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Especially when we’re going through challenging times, it can feel tempting to try to control the future—but this doesn’t change that much lies beyond our control. Try as we may to avoid the unknown, the future remains uncertain.

How do we navigate change knowing that nothing is guaranteed? How can we develop inner strength to grow, heal, and evolve?

Healer practitioner Staci Boden answers these questions in her …

How to Turn Pain to Joy: 11 Tips for a Powerful Gratitude Journal

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“Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot” ~Hausa Proverb

In my early, dark days of first acquiring a disability, I didn’t feel I had an awful lot to be thankful for.

It was like I had spent my whole life getting to the point where I had a thriving holistic therapy practice I loved, an amazing social life with great friends, and my beautiful dog, who I would regularly take into the country for long walks and my adrenaline pumping exercise routine.

Life was perfect. I had so much to be grateful for, but then it …

Coming Home to Our Light by Embracing the Dark

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“Turn you face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” ~Māori Proverb

I am looking out of the window of the airplane. We are above the clouds; the evening sun is just setting. There is a glow all around me. I am lost in this moment. I feel like I’ve never been closer to the heavens. I can stay here in these clouds forever. I am at peace.

I am returning from my first trip to Jamaica.

I went to this island paradise on what was supposed to be a fun, party trip. Yes I had fun …

6 Ways to Decrease Your Suffering

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“The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it.” ~Helen Keller

You’ve probably heard the saying “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”

For many years, I didn’t understand how pain and suffering were different from each other. They seemed inextricably wrapped up together, and I took it for granted that one was the inevitable consequence of the other.

However, as I have grown to understand my own capacity to create happiness, I noticed something interesting about the nature of my suffering.

As I reflect back on painful episodes in my life, I can recall losing people …

Be Gentle with Yourself When Dealing with Heartbreak

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“Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.” ~Unknown

I’m sitting in the nail salon near my apartment, perusing Vogue and making small talk with the woman who is cradling my hand and filing my nails. We’re catching up on our lives; I tell her I’ve been in Phoenix for the month. She nods and, in broken English, inquires about him.

I’d like to say my subsequent tears are a rarity, but lately, they seem to have a mind of their own.

I sit across from my best …

Healing Depression by Taking Care of Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

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“Suffering is not caused by pain but by resisting pain.”~Unknown

Prior to my twenty-second birthday I was spiraling down a self-destructive path, partying at all hours of the morning and drinking excessively to numb my pain. I was a rebel with a cause, as the lure of the nightlife kept me away from my dysfunctional home.

I was searching for love and happiness in all of the wrong places, but the universe stopped me dead in my tracks, both literally and figuratively, when my brother committed suicide.

Devastated by the loss of his presence in my life and the close …

Emotionally Closed Off No More – How I’m Healing My Pain and Learning to Love

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“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~ Buddha

There’s only one way to survive life. Shut down, or get hurt and die.

Well, that’s what I once believed.

At some point during my childhood I decided that the only way to survive in the world was to shut down and close off my heart. I’m sure given a choice I would have chosen only to avoid the pain of life (not the pleasure), …

The Transformative Powers of Pain: Healing from Abuse

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“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~Jean Paul Sartre

We all have our stories of how people have wronged us and caused pain. Allow me to tell you mine.

I’m a survivor of abuse: mental, emotional, physical, and sexual. I was born into a family of abusers and witnessed it from the day I was born until age sixteen.

As a child, I thought my family was perfect. However, when I was twelve years old, I realized just how truly dysfunctional my family was. It was as if a light bulb went off and the …

7 Ways to Manage a Break Up and Work Through the Pain

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“Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.” ~Dalai Lama

Some breakups are so bad that they make you hate the sunshine. It’s up there gleaming, looking down on you, being all sunny despite the fact that you feel like a slice of hell. The suffering is relentless. The sky is ugly.

The ending of my last relationship was awful. I think it hurt as bad as it did because this wasn’t some random young woman who had just walked into my life. This was someone whom …

How Pain Can Guide Us and Make Us Whole

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 “Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagon

We all internalize our suffering to one extent or another. Some of us instinctively take it to a point where it manifests as various physical aches and pains. When I was little, my body learned to carry the burden of the pain that was too big for my heart.

In some ways, it’s served me very well. It let me compartmentalize enough to function beautifully in certain areas. I have an Ivy League education, many work accolades, and all that …

The Difference Between Forgiving and Forgetting

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“Some people think it’s holding that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Unknown

I will never forget the moment my marriage ended.

My husband and I had fought the night before, about many of the same things we’d been fighting about for the entirety of our four-month marriage.

He was dissatisfied with our sex life and my lack of respect for him. I was struggling with bipolar disorder, changing medications, going back to school, and trying to please a man who seemed to find fault with everything I did.

During that fight, he choked me twice to prevent me …

Conscious Healing: The Power of Mindfulness and Meditation

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“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

One morning I woke up and noticed a few strange red bumps on my arms—bug bites, I thought.

Then, the next day, more bumps. Within one full week, my skin went from being clear and tan to being covered with red, scaly teardrop spots all over my body, including my face.

My self-esteem and confidence were thrown out the window; my comfort zone reduced to about the size of a prisoner’s cell.

I went to the dermatologist, avoiding any possible eye contact or bright office lights, and made my way into …

How Curiosity Can Help Us Heal from Pain and Grow

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“Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.” ~Bryant H. McGil

I don’t think I’d be alive if it weren’t for my curiosity.

Is that a dramatized statement? Maybe.

For me, curiosity has brought a curious kind of “fun” and “enchantment” to an otherwise bleak, painful, and seemingly hopeless period in my life.

Diagnosed with “burn-out” (a.k.a. adrenal fatigue) in 2009, my life quickly unraveled in front of me. I lost my job, my health, and my social life.

From what seemed like one moment to the next (but in fact was a shift happening over numerous weeks) I …

Dealing with a Break Up and Learning from the Experience

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“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

Relationships end, everyone knows that. The tough part is actually dealing with suffering, accepting, letting go, moving on, and processing a whole lot of other feelings at the same time.

Six months ago my ex-boyfriend decided to end our relationship because he couldn’t forgive me for a mistake I’d made.

During the first weeks of our breakup I decided that it would be best if I just gave him some time to think things out. I accepted the …

Letting Go of Your Past to Create a New Future

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“As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.” -Eckhart Tolle

I grew up in what looked like a happy, all-American household—eight children, a dutiful housewife for a mother, and a father who was both a janitor at my school and a member of the Knights of Columbus and American Legion.

However, in the background, terror lurked. My father, verbally and physically abusive, terrorized us every day. Even after growing up, taking back my life and moving across the country, I still wore my victim story like a badge.

The subtext …

A Simple Prescription for Natural Healing

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“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict from life but the ability to cope with it.” -Unknown

 

When my daughter, Nava, was critically ill, on a ventilator in a drug-induced coma for three months, one of the ICU doctors called me in after a couple of weeks to tell me that if she survives, it will be a long road.

He started writing out a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication to “help” me through this horrific ordeal.  I certainly don’t fault him here as this was an extreme acute situation and he didn’t know if I could …

Will You Get Bitter or Better?

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“Instead of complaining that the rose bush is full of thorns, be happy the thorn bush has roses.” ~Proverb

I am a member of a mercifully small subset of society. I am the mother of a dead child.

Twenty years ago, my daughter Grace—my first child, my only girl—was born prematurely and died 32-minutes later. As I write this, I am astonished that it has been twenty years since I met my daughter for the only time.

Time stopped for me when Grace took her last little breath. And I was certain that my life could never start again. 

I …

9 Lessons on Loss, Forgiveness, and Healing

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“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese

I’m trying to meditate but I find myself overcome by sadness; I’m still grieving after all this time.

I’ve gone through phases of forgiveness recently that have shown me how to acknowledge the painful relationship I had with my mother, the anger and resentment we shared, and the loss of each other that we both went through the older we grew. Maybe it’s not as bad as that, but it feels like it.

My reflections have brought me closer to the woman who I never took …

Book Giveaway and Review: A Lamp in the Darkness

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Update: The winners for this giveaway have already been chosen. Subscribe to Tiny Buddha for daily or weekly emails and to learn about future giveaways!

The 5 winners:

“Sometimes we have to go right into the fire in order to find our true healing.” ~Jack Kornfield

No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve accomplished, no matter how well you’ve planned, you will deal with challenges in life. We all will. And many times, they will hit us unexpectedly.

We will all lose things and people we love. We will all make mistakes and …

How to Deal with a Break Up

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“No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I met him the last semester of college and was instantly attracted to him.  I was definitely attracted to him physically, but it was the way he sat in class with such quiet confidence and mystery that made me long to know him.

I practically drooled all over my desk whenever he spoke, but couldn’t even bring myself to say, “Hello.”  One night out, I saw him standing by the bar. I told my friend that I had a crush on him and she promptly gave me two choices: Go speak to him …