What is your biggest challenge when it comes to practicing self-care? For me, it’s always been embracing self-care practices for the mind. Caring for your body is much easier than caring for your mind and spirit. We often avoid facing our feelings, fears, and emotions. Why? Well, because facing them can feel very uncomfortable, even intimidating. Other times, we simply don’t want to deal with some of the things we feel. I know that I don’t always love being alone with my thoughts and feelings and in the past, I’d get lost in distractions and noise, just to avoid facing them. And, to be honest, it’s not all that difficult to do. Our days are filled with noise, deadlines, chores, always being in a hurry. We also often overcommit, sometimes we refuse to let things go. Keeping all those thoughts and emotions bottled up is a defense mechanism, but sooner or later, they always end up pouring out. As I mentioned in this post, this is something that I want to let go of this year. One of my goals is to come back to the place of peace and mental clarity. To do that, I’m revisiting some of the self-care […]

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Why I Love Getting Older: 7 Reasons Getting Older is Pretty Great “I can’t die before learning French!” – me, five years ago, in a full-on panic mode, and going through a quarter-life crisis. Despite my panic, I didn’t actually miss being younger. I think that it was the number itself, that freaked me out a bit. More than the number 30, which would seem odd, if it wasn’t for the fact that by 30, I’d learned an important lesson from a very stylish, older gentleman. Whom I’ve never actually talked to. “I am not going to lie; that old man scratching his butt for the past five minutes is kind of distracting.”– I said to my husband while waiting in line with him during one of his regular trips to a completely-out-of-the-way, as in four-towns-over, deli. “Who?”– he turns around as if my gentle whisper wasn’t enough of an implication to not do just that. “Oh, that guy?”- he goes– “Well stop looking then, you perv. He’s here every Saturday. I’m pretty sure he does that every time he tries to remember something.” “Uhh…okay????”– me “Oh, come on now. He’s old. He ran out of fucks to give a […]

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10 Things to let go of in 2020 How do you feel about this past year? Has 2019 been good to you? I hope that it’s been a great year, filled with beautiful memories. Personally, I have mixed feelings about this past year. There have been many wonderful moments, amazing people I’ve met, friends I’ve made, things I’ve learned. But I’ve also experienced loss, once again, and feel like it’s been a bit of a dumpster fire of a year. Actually, I cannot wait to watch it burn and just go away. I mean that quite literally, too. I’ll be burning a few things, from the safety of my fireplace, of course; like a bunch of those hospital ID wristlets you get when you’re being admitted, and other things I’m letting go of. I wrote each of them down on a piece of paper and will let go of them one at a time. I’ve always believed that any time is a good time for a change. There’s no need to wait for the new year, next month, next week. How many times have you told yourself “starting Monday I will ____” and didn’t live up to that promise? If you […]

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“I feel like I’m an emotional sponge.” My friend just finished telling me about how her daily lunch break at work has turned into her being forced to listen to hour-long rants from one of her co-workers who is going through a bitter divorce. Yup. I can relate. To being an emotional sponge, that is. If I talk to someone close and listen to their problems, struggles, or issues, it’s almost a guarantee that I will have trouble falling asleep that day. Or that at least, my energy levels will suddenly drop. Certain people or places just have that effect on me. Over the last couple of years, after going through quite a few changes during the journey of my personal growth, I’ve discovered that I very easily soak up other people’s emotions. Then I let them take over and I worry, I stress, and then I worry some more. It was around that time that I realized that sometimes, you have no choice but to protect your energy in order to stay sane. HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ENERGY FIND YOUR HAPPY SPACE A little secret to my sanity? I turn my phone off, all.the.time. I just have to. There […]

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20 Things to Start Doing for Yourself How often do you revisit the goals and dreams you’ve put on hold for “another time?” You spend a lot of time giving. Giving yourself to others, to your work and everything else in between. Life gets busy and you often put yourself and your needs last. They don’t seem important, urgent or significant, do they? Take a moment to think about it and ask yourself, if any of these apply to you: You often commit to doing things you really don’t feel like doing. You’ve become an emotional sponge, soaking up someone’s constant emotional dumping. Even though you know that it has a negative effect on your mood and your own energy, you just don’t know how to set boundaries.  You have a tendency to beat yourself up over a stupid mistake you’ve made, for hours on end.  Your fear of being judged stops you from doing and trying things you’ve always wanted to try, do and see. You’ve heard the world tell you that it’s “too late” for you to make a change, to try new things, to stir things up, to start again. Well, here’s a little reminder: it’s never […]

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