How Kendall overcame her body shame and turned her lights on

How’s your life? Is it in vibrant color or kind of greyed-out? Are you filled with so much body shame and shame for who you are that you’re living as if you’re carrying a big, cement weight around? I know the feeling because I’ve been in both turned on and turned off mode. And what’s so awful about being in turned off mode is that you probably don’t even know it. You’re living a sort of grey life, you may feel like a victim, and you just don’t have the energy and vibrancy that you desire. You wish you felt better but you have no idea how to get there. I was inspired to write this after my dear friend Kendall shared her story with me. She had almost completely shut down after a two-year relationship with a verbally abusive boyfriend in her early 20s. This is her journey from being a […]

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If you’re tired of being stressed and anxious….

I decided I’d rather love than divide. Loving keeps my stress way down and dividing makes my stress go way up. But sometimes choosing to love rather than divide is not so easy, such as right now during our country’s current political state of affairs. People feel very, very strongly one way or the other, and I’m no different. But in the midst of a heated argument with someone I care about – each one of us taking a different political side – I stopped and took a breath. I hated the way I was feeling by being all heated up in an argument. Hated that I was getting angry with someone who means a lot to me. I really hated the way I could see this argument dividing us from each other. So I took a big breath and stopped. I said to him, “I’m sorry for not listening […]

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Why perfection can’t make you happy – but this will

Our culture of perfection is bringing up more insights for me. You know, we’re supposed to have perfect hair, perfect bodies, perfect kitchens, perfect homes, perfect relationships, be fabulous foodies and cooks, and we’re even supposed to have perfect thoughts. You’re probably like me in that you hardly notice what’s going on because we’re swimming in this culture. For me, once I started paying attention, I realized I was telling myself stuff like this: “If I just exercise more, I’ll have a perfect body. If I take some cooking classes I’ll be able to be a foodie, too. If I get more spiritual, I’ll have more perfect thoughts,” and so on. Our consumer culture feeds this stuff to us constantly and it’s hard to ignore. We’re being told all of the time that we can do more and be more. We’re inspired by blog posts about the latest exercise routine, […]

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A beautiful life is a messy life

Here is what a beautiful life looks like to me. It’s messy. It’s not all flowers and roses. But there is absolute beauty in mess, especially the mess of our emotions. I just had my own experience of beautiful grief that I want to share with you. But before I tell you about my experience, I want you to know something important. Even though our election is what inspired my beautiful grief – this is by no means a post about politics. I am absolutely not advocating for liberal versus conservative. I think both sides have merit and shortcomings. As you may know from my last post – my grief is that someone with Mr. Trump’s character is now our role-model-in-chief. I’m sad because I want our president – liberal or conservative – to be a fabulous role model, lifting us up and inspiring us to be better human beings. […]

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