Tag: mental-health
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A Psychic Told Me to Throw Rocks
A week ago, I booked a reiki session that quickly turned to a psychic reading. Now, before you roll your eyes or assume I’ve gone completely off the deep end, hear me out. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that sometimes people can see things differently than we do. Whether that’s intuition, energy, life…
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The Cat Didn’t Second-Guess Anything
Recently, my daughter’s boyfriend sent her a picture of the most beautiful little furball. She showed up on the steps of the cottage he’s staying at and helped herself to his lobster fishing gear like she had an open invitation. Make no mistake, this was no stray cat. We’re assuming it’s a female, she was…
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The Noise Isn’t the Destination
“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every barking dog.” — Winston Churchill I read this quote recently and found it profoundly interesting, it hits a little harder when you’ve lived long enough to know exactly what those “barking dogs” sound like. They aren’t always the obvious critics or…
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The Quiet Strength of Resilience
If you had asked me years ago what resilience meant, I probably would have given you a textbook answer; something about bouncing back after hardships. But life has a way of teaching us lessons in the most personal ways. For me, resilience has become less about “bouncing back” and more about finding a way through.…
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The World Feels Like a Dumpster Fire — Here’s How to Take Care of Yourself Anyway
It’s hard to ignore it. The constant stream of bad news, division, uncertainty. The feeling that no matter where you look, something is burning — and not in a way that brings light or warmth. It’s exhausting to exist in a world that feels like it’s always on edge. Calling it a “dumpster fire” might…
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The Quiet Power of Walking Away from Gossip
Gossip is one of those things that slips into everyday life so easily we barely notice it happening. It can start as concern, curiosity, or even connection but in the mix of all of that, it often turns into something heavier. Something that doesn’t sit quite right. I’ve been on both sides of it. I’ve…
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Proof that hard seasons end
There’s a morning every spring where I get up for my daily walk and there’s a noticeable difference in the air, today was that day. There is usually still snow piled along the driveway, although most of it has melted here on the east coast where I live. Mornings still bite a little when you…
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Your Body Remembers What Your Mind Tries to Forget
We like to think that when something bad happens, we can just “move on.” We tell ourselves, it’s in the past, I was overreacting, or I shouldn’t feel this way. But in reality, your body remembers. Even if your mind tries to reason it away, even if you tell yourself it “wasn’t that big of…
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You Are Not Everyone’s Emotional Lifeboat — Let Them Learn to Swim
Depending on where you are in your own healing journey, you may or may not realize that you’ve spent a lifetime treading water for everyone else. Whether that means you were the one who stayed calm in chaos, or listened without interrupting when a friend or family member needed to vent, or maybe you’ve just…
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The Woman I Raised Is Teaching Me How to Be One
When I was growing up, being a “good woman” meant being agreeable. It meant keeping the peace and not making things awkward. There was an unwritten expectation to smooth things over when someone else made a mess and to carry more than your share all the while calling it love. The word no didn’t come…
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The Overburdened Woman
If you’ve ever felt like you’re constantly running on empty — juggling work, caregiving, friendships, appointments, emotions — and still feeling like you’re not doing enough… you’re not imagining it. I once heard Elizabeth Gilbert say: “Nearly all the women I know are stressing themselves sick over the pathological fear that they simply aren’t doing…
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Wanderlust meets routine
People love to say that life isn’t meant to be lived on repeat. That we aren’t meant to wake up every morning, pour the same coffee into the same mug, drive the same roads, and fall asleep exhausted just to do it all again tomorrow. Travel quotes flood my social media this time of year…
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Hurt People Hurt People… But I’m Tired of That Being an Excuse
Hurt people hurt people my therapist said it to me years ago, since then, I’ve read it in books, heard it in every self help podcast and I’ve repeated it myself and it’s true; pain that isn’t healed often spills out sideways through sharp words, emotional distance, defensiveness, addiction, control, or silence. I understand all…
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Emotionally available, energetically protected
I used to take everything to heart. If someone was upset with me, I’d replay the conversation for days. I would spend hours crafting the perfect comeback in my head, only to keep it there. If something didn’t go as planned, I’d feel like it was somehow my fault and replay it until I was…
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Choosing the right people
I’m an avid listener of the Mel Robbins podcast, so when I saw an episode last fall about the 80-year Harvard study on what makes a good life, I was excited to listen. A couple years back, my youngest had just gone off to college and was taking a sociology course. One night, she told…
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You Don’t Need to Become Someone New
Every January, for most of my life, I made the same New Year’s Eve promises: This year I’ll lose weight. Spend less money. Get myself to work on time (when my kids were little—lol).And every December, I’d find myself wondering where the year went and what happened to all that motivation. We’re told that when…
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Why I chose to stop drinking in a world that doesn’t know how to stop
I chose to stop drinking regularly two years ago. When I say that, I’m not claiming to be on a sober journey and no, I don’t have a problem with alcohol. I just noticed weekend after weekend of going without it, I was happier, I was sleeping better, and I had some spare change in…
The Other Side of Nice 