A message to myself, passed to you.

These were words to myself for my own healing, which have since helped countless others in their healing journey. I share them with you now.

You're not broken, you’re blocked. Throughout your journey you’ve run into obstacle after obstacle blocking your path, until they prevented you from going further.

This may seem like the end of the road, but it’s not, you just haven’t seen all your options. That’s because obstacles are detours in the right direction. When a door closes, there is always a window. Doors lead to the ground. Windows lead to the sky, and the sky has endless possibilities.

Right now you’re looking around you, trying to see what other doors and passageways are open. But you’re not looking up, at the windows. That’s your way out.

You carry pain, which you’ve accepted as a part of life. But pain is not just a part of life, it’s LIVING. You have lived. You’ve known grace, sorrow, loss, love, joy, pain, and so much more. Pain is a blessing, because it means you're alive. If you don’t feel pain, you aren’t living. You aren’t alive.

But pain is exhausting when you can't let it go. You struggle to carry it, dragging it with you in life. What you don’t know is how to transmute that pain into power, purpose, & pleasure. When you do that, you’ll be unstoppable. You’ll feel alive for the very first time.

You may not feel alive now from the weight you carry, but you can let that go. I know because I did. I embraced the pain & allowed it to transform me. It made me stronger, more capable, kind, loving, and caring for myself & those along my path. But most of all, I learned to honor myself, first and foremost.

Perhaps our paths will cross one day, or perhaps you were meant to read this now to help you feel supported, strong, loved, & empowered. Perhaps you were meant to see what being alive, thriving, and healed really is. My scars are always there, but the wound has healed.

Healing allows you to evolve into the person you want to be, someone YOU will be proud of. When that happens you will know, because what’s inside will finally match what everyone already sees on the outside: a healed, whole, complete person. One who’s alive, joyful, peaceful, calm, and free. Free to be you, in any way you please. Free from the constrains of societal pressures and worries of other people’s opinions.

Free to harness the power to heal yourself.

Stop prioritizing others over yourself

100% this is something I have to keep reminding myself of for the rest of my life. I used to wear it as a badge of honor that I always prioritized others over myself, until I realized I was drowning in sacrificial behavior, living for everyone else except myself.

The only thing we know about what will happen this year is that we don’t know. So why not make it a year for healing? A way to use this time of uncertainty to our best advantage. For growth, healing, taking care of our mental health, and accepting that things may never be as they were “before”.

As a trauma specialist, I know how important it is to use time like this to focus on healing child wounds. @tanaamen explains this wonderfully, addressing a common strategy of hiding or minimizing past traumatic experiences:

“The concept of hiding—or minimizing—a traumatic past is a common survival strategy for many people. It’s as though we’d like to take all those frightening, chaotic, humiliating, or abusive memories and put them in a box that others can’t access. This way no one can see the secret pain hidden inside—or so we think.”

These things only work to come to the surface later in life, when similar traumatic experiences trigger the initial trauma, leaving you more traumatized and unable to cope in the future. A bit like what’s happening in our world today. We’re seeing A LOT of unhealed trauma coming to the surface, triggered by the events around us.

Healing from past trauma is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, and the greatest way to prioritize ourselves over others.

Let’s use this year of uncertainty to take care of our mental health first. Let’s use this time to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

If you’re feeling anxious, frustrated, fearful, ask yourself where this is coming from and when you first experienced this feeling. Once you trace it back to the root and heal it, you can move forward in life with a new outlook, new perspective and new love for yourself.

I know because I did it 🙌✨💜

You create the world you live in

Feeling stressed, depressed, angry, anxious, and confused about the state of the world? Read this.

You do not have to subscribe to the fear mongering going on. You do not have to choose a side. You do not have to prove to anyone how woke you are. You do not have to worry about others shaming you when you don't engage. You do not have to believe everything you're hearing or seeing.

Take care of yourself first. Turn off the TV. Get off social media. Go take a bath. Stop getting angry about things you can't control. It's just. Not. Worth it.

STOP THE DOOMSCROLLING! You'll be ok!

Doomscrolling is literally a word now, created just for 2020. Look it up online, it’s true.

Doomscrolling... a 2020 development wreaking havoc on the nation. So much that we even created a word for it.

Doomscrolling is a manufactured tactic by the media to make us chronically anxious and afraid. According to @amen_clinics, information (especially negative) is like crack. Brain-imaging research in 2019 found that information triggers the dopamine-fueled reward system in the same way as food, money, or drugs. The authors of this study suggest this is why we are susceptible to clickbait.

Doomscrolling = clickbait on steroids.

The human brain is wired for negativity. American psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson famously said "The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones." When you know this (and media corporations do), it's easy to create scare-inducing headlines about spiking COVID cases, politics, looting, & rioting keep us glued + afraid. And when you're afraid, you're easily controlled.

Fear leads to unhealthy behaviour like alcoholism, depression, anxiety, relationship problems, & more. You've seen it on social media, or perhaps you were caught up in one of these situations, as I was.

The best remedy to stop your doomscrolling habits is to start focusing on what's going RIGHT in your life rather than going wrong. Limit daily your social media and news intake. Take a mental break, get outside, LIVE YOUR LIFE.

It's not worth it letting go of a decade+ friendship because you disagree on politics, health, etc, whatever the case may be. Reassess what's valuable in your life: human connection or the TV giving you because it's telling you to? And proceed from there.

Here are more ways to avoid doomscrolling and take care of your mental health, according to Amen Clinics where I got my Brain Health Coaching Certification from.

Set time limits for scrolling
Add good news to your daily scrolling. Start and end your day with positivity. Read inspiring stories found on the Good News Network.
Go on an intermittent information fast. Mentally unplug from news on a regular basis.
If you’re tempted to send a snarky say “STOP” and count to 10 before hitting reply
Block social media and news sites that are especially depressing
Make your bedroom a technology free zone

You'll be ok! 💚👍

How to have the courage to go down your own path

"Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up when you can't control the outcome." --- Brené Brown

I've never felt so vulnerable in my life than I have in the last two years when I tore down all the walls I built to protect myself.

I've also never felt like I've failed so many times as in this last year, or like I've veered off course and gone down so many different paths and attempted different things that just didn't fit.

But through that vulnerability, failure and accepting that I no longer have any control over any outcome, came an immense strength, growth, and peace within myself.

I've learned to accept that vulnerability is love, strength, and growth, but also difficult and filled with uncertainty.

I've learned to accept feedback, both good and bad, sometimes very harsh but truthful. Accepting feedback is how I grow, but I also must be careful who I'm accepting feedback from.

Brené Brown says that shielding ourselves from all feedback by disconnecting from vulnerability and emotion gets us to a place where we no longer feel anything. You pay for self protection by sealing off your heart from everyone and everything.

But when you seal off your heart you experience a death--of yourself, your heart, your soul. And I've already experienced that death.

I want to keep feeling alive, vibrant, and fearless. I don't want to fall back into my belief that vulnerability is weakness, I don't need it, and I can go it alone. Cause the truth is, I can't.

So here's to vulnerability, to living your truth, to walking the path of MOST resistance, but the one that makes me feel most alive.

2020 taught me so much, but mostly how to continue down my own road, accepting only feedback from others that I respect, but also not compromising my journey, change course and try to walk down the same path others did.

I need to stay on my own road, even though it may be lonely at times.

Excited to see what else 2021 brings and where my road leads.

"It's your road, and yours alone.
others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.”-- Rumi

What other people think of you is none of your business

FYI, You will never please everyone, so don't even try.

What others think and have to say about you has nothing to do with you. It's about them and what they dislike about themselves.

Here's the key though: if you have a problem liking, accepting, and being content with yourself, there's no way you can give up worrying about others.

As women we are trained from birth to be likable, content, happy, never angry or sad, to stay thin, never age, always be sexy but mysterious, smart but not too smart, funny but not too funny, serious but not too serious, so many things our male counterparts never have to worry about.

We have to relearn that it's not our responsibility to be liked, understood, approved of, or accepted by everyone. If you constantly try to get everyone to like you, there is no way you can act from an authentic place. You will lose yourself in the pursuit of other's approval.

Take the time to work on you. Figure out what you don't like about yourself, and change it. If you can't change it, learn to accept it.

I'm learning to unlearn. To live from an authentic place. This means being sad when you're sad, raging when you're angry, laughing uncontrollably when you're happy.

Repressed trauma turns into sadness. Repressed sadness turns to rage. Repressed rage turns to depression. Repressed depression turns to mental illness. Repressed Mental illness turns into disease. Disease alters your DNA, which then passes on to the next generation.

Life is not all sexy, perfect, happy, and joyful. It's messy, sad, despicable, confusing, and tragic. But it's also beautiful, transformative, and adventurous. Learn to love it and in turn, love yourself. That's the true act of rebellion.