Does fall fill you with dread, knowing winter follows on its heels? If so, you’re not alone and you might suffer from SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder. The following 6 tips are great techniques to help sustain you through the dark days of winter:
Good News about S.A.D
Mortified: Share, Cringe, Laugh, Heal
Mortified is a worldwide storytelling event where adults tell stories about their lives by sharing their most mortifying childhood artifacts (diaries, letters, lyrics, poems, home movies)… in front of total strangers.
This past November 5th, I had the extreme honor of being chosen to bare my soul in pubescent prose in a room full of friends and stranger - though, after the raw reveal of reading my childhood diary pages, the supportive strangers truly felt like friends I just hadn’t met yet.
Journal Prompts for Presence
Ruminating on the past, or worrying about a future that has yet to come, can keep us from being fully present with all of our energy and self love intact. Instead our attention and energy flow into experiences that have already passed and cannot be changed, or into prognosticating a future crafted by our worries.
Writing about our thoughts and feelings, plucks this anxious energy from the ether, forming it into a language we can comprehend. Labeling and defining the static of our buzzy inattention, allows us to ground ourselves in the now, harnessing our energy to fully experience the wonder of the present.
Journaling T.I.P. for mindfulness & self-compassion
Learning by failure: life on the edge of the comfort zone
I’ve always learned by failing, like getting lost in a new neighborhood, in order to find my way around (pre-Google maps!). But, this can come at a cost to my self-esteem, as I’m constantly in what Brene Brown calls “Fu*king First Times”.
To get me through the feelings of being a stranger in a foreign land, I’ve had to focus as much as possible of my WHY. Why did I want to make this course/book? How do I wish to change the world/give back to my community? Focusing on my why (mostly) gets me through the rusty machinations of the unknown.
My WHY : Creating and delivering inexpensive and accessible mental health tools to as many people as possible so they can take charge of their own healing.
5 Ways to Relax with your Partner in 15 Minutes or Less
How to stop being hard on yourself as a parent
When you hear that inner mom-guilt voice whisper, "you're not good enough," here's what to say to yourself instead
Parenting is hard enough without a pandemic to navigate. We should be congratulating ourselves for just getting through the day, instead of us beating ourselves up for not measuring up to the Pinterest post next door.
We all want our child to internalize the best of us and leave the rest. That's why modeling self-love and kindness for yourself is a gift you give your child. Lead by example and you will end up raising a compassionate adult, with healthy boundaries and lots of love to give.
Mindful Integrity: An 8 Week DIY Mindfulness Course
During times of great upheaval, there’s a sense that we should “to live today as it were your last.” This sounds really appealing, but what does it really mean?
Spiritually speaking, living each day as your last isn’t bestowing worldly possessions and checking-off bucket lists, but about holistic integrity. As Adlai Stevenson famously said, “it is not the years in your life, but the life in your years.” The following are topics of contemplation, calls to action and operating instructions for more mindful living. Try using one of these teachings a week as a focus for your meditation, as journal prompts, or for deepening conversations with loved ones.
Mother's Day Tribute and COVID Poetry
The New Yorker Curates COVID Levity
It is not always easy to locate joy these days, but we must keep trying. Our spirits must be fed, not only so that we may persist, but so may help help other to do so. To that end, I’m sharing some examples that make me laugh/cry (craugh?). The New Yorker artists are brilliant at creating poignant levity from the ineffable. Here are my current favorites…
Boosting Emotional Resiliency During COVID-19
The COVID-19 crisis, with its mandated social isolation and pervasive threat of infection, has created a kind of atomic fusion, a clash of mind-numbing monotony mixed with a steady undercurrent of existential crisis.
With the widest lens, this pandemic is a clarion call to see the deep roots of our interdependence. On a smaller scale, it shines a spotlight on the best and worst of our social structures; from the heroic dedication of our first responders, to the disproportionate deaths of our most vulnerable. Finally, on a personal level, we are all connected in the quest to stay flexible in mind and resilient in body, while we the illusion of certainty shatters around us.
The following are some mental health directives to help adapt to the daily (hourly!) seismic shifts in our internal microcosmos, without succumbing to despair.