10 ways to make life a little easier
Life can be complicated enough without our making it any harder. And between everything we need to do and everything we somehow convince ourselves we should do, it's easy to spend far more time and energy than we'd like just trying to keep up.
maybe we just need less to manage
I gotta say, I'm beat. And I bet I'm not the only one.
For the last two and a half years, I’ve been writing, re-writing, editing, revising, and publishing a book, and as wonderful as that is, it’s taken the wind out of my sails.
Things we shouldn’t have to get sick to learn
We often talk about what people living with chronic conditions need to learn, adjust to, or do differently. But what if we flipped the conversation and considered what their experiences might teach us all about living well?
A Celebration of the Things that delight us
What is it that makes our favorite things… our favorite things? Maybe it's their beauty, or the comfort they bring. Sometimes it’s the memory or association they carry. It’s often simply the way something feels in our hands, or the
learning to take up space
Life has a way of shrinking us down. Many of us learn early in life to stay in line, lower our voices, and avoid drawing attention to ourselves. While some of that training served a purpose when we were young, we eventually carry it into adulthood, along with the idea that taking up space is a bad thing.
7 ways to put more kindness into the world (and Into Your Own LIfe)
I’m pretty sure there’s something that you and I would easily agree on: it can feel a little bleak out there these days.
Turn on the news for five minutes, and there's a decent chance you'll want to crawl under a rock. War. Division. Economic uncertainty. Another tragedy. Another reason
the smaller ways we reinvent ourselves
We hear a lot of people talk about reinventing themselves these days. Yet like most other popular phrases, each of us might have a different idea of what that actually means.
Many people probably imagine reinventing themselves to mean a new job, a new city, or a new apartment. Maybe even a new hairstyle and a total makeover. It’s easy to see why. These are the
what does “Listen to your body” actually mean?
“Listen to your body.”
It sounds simple enough. It’s the kind of advice many of us have heard countless times, especially when we’re dealing with pain, illness, stress, or exhaustion.
But what does it actually mean?
when I thought creativity had left me
There are some things that many of us have always been searching for: truth, clarity, that ever-fleeting creative spark. Yet more often than not, those things have been right there in front of us the entire time.
What chanting gives me when pain takes over
As some of you may already know, I had been practicing various forms of mindfulness and meditation for over thirty years by the time chronic pain came into my life. I had learned different ways of working with my attention, my breath, and the constant activity of my own mind.
But pain changed the equation. Many of the things I knew how to do suddenly felt much harder to access when my body and brain were overwhelmed by pain that was both acute and relentless. This was also a time when the anchors of my daily life were slipping away, and the identity I’d built seemed to disappear.
Whose voice are you listening to?
I write a lot about self-compassion, in part because it may sound simple enough in theory but can be hard to put into practice.
We sometimes hear someone say, “Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to someone you care about.” It's good advice. But what happens when we've spent decades doing something different?
The Illusion of falling behind
The strange thing about finally starting to feel a little better is that your to-do list perks up, too.
Mine certainly has.
As fate would have it, I live with an autoimmune condition as well as chronic pain. After spending the last couple of weeks feeling especially run-down from a massive flare (thanks, Canadian wildfire smoke!), I've been looking around my house and seeing everything that hasn’t been done.
mindful, compassionate, and occasionally fed up
I spend a lot of time writing about mindfulness, compassion, reflection, and self-awareness.
And I mean every word.
But every now and then, I also want to roll my eyes at something.
I find it comforting to know that some of the kindest, most emotionally intelligent people out there also have another voice within them, the one that occasionally says,
"Oh, come ON."
the two words I didn’t fix in my book
I’m currently in the process of formatting my book. After two and a half years of writing, it’s undergone no fewer than eight revisions, with a few later tweaks here and there.
The subject matter is personal, based on some hard-won lived experience. What started out as therapeutic venting has been channeled into
5 beliefs i had to unlearn while living with chronic pain
Living with chronic pain has changed many things in my life.
What surprised me most wasn't what I learned along the way. It was the many beliefs I had to unlearn.
7 things i started doing between doctor visits to take my power back
Some of the hardest words I heard in the doctor's office weren't "We don't know what's wrong," or even "There's nothing more we can do."
They were: "We'll see you again in three to six months."
And like so many others living with chronic illness or pain, I found myself wondering:
"Okay...but what am I supposed to do until then?"
the harder part of receiving kindness
We’ve all been told it’s better to give than receive, and for many of us, it’s certainly easier.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've found myself on the receiving end of an extraordinary amount of encouragement. Some of it came from familiar places, some from complete strangers. Unexpected generosity. New connections. Small but genuine and
There was supposed to be a video: The Idea i had three days ago
There are so many things I’d love to tell you. Moments of my day I’d really enjoy sharing. Ideas for content that are always running through my mind.
But the truth is, I’m exhausted.
the book you’ll never read
I've written a book, but there's another version of it that you'll never read.
That’s the one written in invisible ink, for my eyes only.
It's filled with paragraphs that never made it onto the page, emotions that never made it into the manuscript, and stories that were intentionally set aside.
The book I’ll publish is the one I believe will help people. The invisible-ink version is the one that brought it into being.
The uniquely perfect space of “almost okay with it”
Recently, I heard someone in a painful situation describe herself as being "almost okay with it."
The phrase stayed with me.
She wasn't talking about something small. She was speaking about a loss so profound that I can barely allow myself to imagine it. Yet what lingered in the air wasn't the story itself. It was those few simple words:
"I'm almost okay with it."