Hello, friends. It’s been awhile — a three week break that I hadn’t planned, but such is life. Right? Things have been really hard for me since the middle of July. When I look back on these last few months, the title of Pema Chodron’s book, WHEN THINGS FALL APART, keeps coming to mind. I…
let it be beautiful.
Happy Monday, friends. I hope that you had a beautiful weekend. It is cold, dark, and rainy outside my window right now, just the way a November morning should be. Before I start this post, I want to say thank you to each of you who signed up for my newsletter last week. I was…
Write Hard and Clear About What Hurts :: Part One
The past three weeks of my life have been good. I am healthier and happier than I’ve been in a very long time. But rewind to the twelve months that came before this, and it was a completely different story. A year ago, my life took a difficult & unexpected — but necessary — turn.…
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Motherhood
From ages fifteen to twenty-one, I suffered from severe depression and anxiety. Over the course of that time, I visited with countless doctors and therapists. I was prescribed different medications and sat through fruitless therapy sessions. After years without much change, one day, I found a new therapist who specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).…
Prenatal Depression
How deep they drove themselves into me, the things it was impossible to say aloud. —Sylvia Plath The first trimester of my pregnancy was really hard. When I chose to get pregnant, I expected certain things. I expected the miracle, the joy, the anticipation. I also expected the challenges, but… I wasn’t prepared. For four…
The Laughing Heart | Charles Bukowski
Your Oldest Fears
Jenny Holzer, Truisms, 1982At the root of every single feeling of discomfort, lies one emotion: fear. Fear is the emotion responsible for all forms of suffering. Sadness, anxiety, worry, rage, hatred, envy, and all other forms of suffering are rooted in fear. However, once you stop resisting the will of the Universe, you will understand…
We choose pain because we know it.
I’d first heard about Harlow’s Monkeys in a high school psychology class called Human Behavior. There, we scratched the surface. It would not be until later at university that someone would explain it to me in no uncertain terms, the nightmare of it. The images—video clips, photographs, sterile journal entries—have stayed with me always. I…
Poetry Friday: The Abandoned Valley | Jack Gilbert
The Abandoned Valley | Jack Gilbert Can you understand being alone so long you would go out in the middle of the night and put a bucket into the well so you could feel something down there tug at the other end of the rope?