Healing

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Dating With An Invisible Illness Helped Me Learn To Love My Body

I was so busy making sure that I had a handle on my pain that I didn’t have any extra energy to even consider dating. Pain has a way of narrowing one’s focus, and I was focused on how to handle and decrease my pain — not dating, not even looking.

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Navigating The Trauma Of Moving

Moving can be a traumatic experience. We often forget how many remnants of the past we hold onto—whether intentionally or accidentally, just because we put a letter away in a drawer and forgot about it.

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I’m here alone. I’m free and clear of all attachments.

Learning To Love The Grey: Leaving Behind The Ghosts Of Loves Past In New Orleans

Loving means giving up control. Releasing something to the universe. It’s not prescriptive. There is no place for black and white in love. It’s the ultimate grey.

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"If I’m being totally honest with you, I feel a burst of pride whenever someone tells me I look too put together to have been given this diagnosis."

What Not To Say When Someone Tells You About Their Personality Disorder

When someone denies my personality disorder, it makes the process of identifying and challenging the thoughts and behaviors that disorder causes even more difficult. There are broken parts of me that I can’t see. I’m working very hard to uncover them and heal them in a way that improves the quality of my inner and outer life. I don’t need anyone else muddying the waters of my trauma; I do that enough all on my own.

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In his death came the “this is no joke” realization that — cliché as it is — life is short.

The Death Of My Father Is Helping Me Live A Better Life 

I’m not sure I would have persisted with such ambition prior to my father’s death. I’ve found that a loved one’s passing does more than nudge you forward; it can catapult you towards exciting opportunities.

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Sometimes, I have to stop and cry and wail and moan for a weekend, but then I get back up.

I Get Depressed Every Summer. This Year, I Decided To Find Out Why.

I don’t want to spend another summer waiting for winter. It took years to realize this, and even more years to act on it. This is the work of healing that no one mentions: you have to find the wounds you didn’t know you had.

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"Connection is healing the world. Because happy, connected people have no reason to act out and be nasty to others."

I'll Show You Mine If You'll Show Me Yours: Vulnerability

When we have an open heart, we experience true joy, love, and intimate connection. So being afraid of vulnerability is really being afraid of intimacy. But we need both to thrive.

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Image by @mightymooseart

Find Your Secret Heart Place: A Guide To Surviving Difficult Times

It did not solve all of my problems. It did not make the reality of this deep hurt go away. But it did make me feel more like myself, which I'd begun to fear I would never feel again.

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