Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins On September 23, 2015, Loukas Angelo was walking to his after-school strength and conditioning class just a few hundred yards from Archbishop Mitty High School. He was approaching the outdoor basketball courts when he ran out into the street and was struck by a car traveling around thirty miles per hour. The impact sent Loukas flying down the street, and he was immediately transported to the closest hospital where he remained in critical condition. I remember sitting on the couch later that afternoon when my phone started blowing up. Feeling curious, I shoved aside my history homework and decided to see what was going on. Multiple people had sent some variation of the same text, “Yo. This is so sad. Did you hear about what happened with Loukas…?” Confused and a little bit scared, I turned to Twitter and started looking through my feed. I was absolutely floored by t...

“Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where i end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom.” ~Henry Cloud Late last night, I once again found myself unable to sleep, and boy was I angry. So, in order not to disturb my other half, who is always asleep the moment his head touches the pillow, I dragged myself off to the sofa. Once there, sat seething in the dark, I listened to my emotion and asked it to speak to me, and guess what it screamed?! Boundaries! Now please bear in mind that I have been on this journey for a while and had also been discussing boundaries earlier in the day, so my inner knowing came out loud and clear. For you this may not be the case, and that’s okay. Practical Tip 1: When you feel angry, take yourself away and write down all those racing thoughts. No judgment, just get pen to scrap piece of paper and write it all down. Do ...

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” ~Viktor Frankl When life goes sideways, it can be hard to take one more breath, let alone find meaning. Trust me. I know. In the same year, I had breast cancer, chemo, radiation, and a divorce I didn’t want. There’s more to the story (there always is), but in essence, I lost everything—my health, my love, my home. During all of this, I lost sight of myself, quit trusting myself. I was sure I was to blame for everything. At the same time, within twenty-four hours of leaving the house I loved, six friends had given me the keys to their houses, telling me I always had a place to stay. My family showed up for me in ways that had me weeping. Also during this time, I had two powerful dreams and one still small voice—these three messengers told me the very things I needed to hear to go on. My first dream involved someone cooking something delicious in a kitchen. I couldn’t eat what she was making, becaus...

“There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming.” ~Sue Monk Kidd From a small café overlooking the boat harbor in Seward, Alaska, I looked out the window at the enormous mountain peak of Mount Alice that protruded from the earth behind rows of tour boats, sailboats, and a cruise ship large enough to carry several thousand passengers. The last few days of my summer there were coming to an end, and I reflected with gratitude on my time there. Located directly off the Gulf of Alaska and within Kenai Fjords National Park, Seward is a place people dream about: bald eagles cut through the sky as frequently as clouds, humpback whales breach the calm bay on a quiet morning, and wildlife roam freely within rows of pine trees that crowd the hillside and hug the small town. Seward was my home for the summer of 2019. I lived in a camper van next to Resurrection River with a full view of Mount Alice. At night I could hear the soft, constant mumble of the river. When I wasn’t work...

“The truth is that there is no such thing as a negative emotion. Emotions only become ‘bad’ and have a negative effect on us when they are suppressed, denied, or unexpressed.” ~Colin Tipping Emotions are constantly and powerfully guiding our lives, even when we are not aware of them, even when we do not feel them or are convinced that we can exclude them from our experiences. Emotions give us precious, sometimes indispensable information about what is best for us, about the best choices we can make, about how to behave. They give us information that we often do not listen to because we devalue them or simply because we have not learned to identify or understand them. In many families, however, some emotions are forbidden. Without even realizing it, some parents naturally teach their children not to feel certain emotions. Growing up, were you told “Don’t be angry!”, “Don’t cry!”, or “You are just a child, you shouldn’t feel sad”? Or you were criticized after expressing a certain em...

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ~ Rumi As I stood on the doorstep of that rehab facility, I felt completely empty except for the overwhelming weight of anxiety and shame. In that moment, I wondered what all the normal people were doing today. How did they cope? And how was it that I couldn’t hack life and that things had spiraled so far down? It’s hard to admit you have a problem. To be honest with yourself when you’ve numbed everything out for so long seems ridiculous. To finally share it with the people around you is also daunting for so many reasons, not the least of which is actually having to give up your most trusted coping mechanism. At that doorstep, I felt at some strange in-between place. On one hand, I knew I had to leave the past behind me, and yet my future was something I couldn’t even begin to imagine. I had no wish for the future. No agenda. I was just desperate. What had led me here was a brutal struggle with alcohol th...

“Create a life that feels good on the inside, not one that just looks good on the outside.” ~ Unknown Since childhood I have been a high achiever. As a kid I was a perfectionist, driven to succeed, to be the best at what I did. I wanted to do well so that both my parents would be proud of me and love me, especially after they divorced. At school and college I worked hard to get straight A’s. Anything less seemed like a failure to me. I was always top of my class, and I won awards. However, this didn’t do me any favors with my classmates. They teased me for being a teacher’s pet and bullied me to bring me down a peg or two. I found it difficult to make friends, and I was often left out. I spent a lot of my time alone reading, drawing, and painting. These things helped me escape into different world. However, my real passion was dance and my dream was to be a dancer, but I knew how difficult it was to be successful enough to make a career at it. My ego ’ s job was to protect me and ...

“Create a life that feels good on the inside, not one that just looks good on the outside.” ~ Unknown Since childhood I have been a high achiever. As a kid I was a perfectionist, driven to succeed, to be the best at what I did. I wanted to do well so that both my parents would be proud of me and love me, especially after they divorced. At school and college I worked hard to get straight A’s. Anything less seemed like a failure to me. I was always top of my class, and I won awards. However, this didn’t do me any favors with my classmates. They teased me for being a teacher’s pet and bullied me to bring me down a peg or two. I found it difficult to make friends, and I was often left out. I spent a lot of my time alone reading, drawing, and painting. These things helped me escape into different world. However, my real passion was dance and my dream was to be a dancer, but I knew how difficult it was to be successful enough to make a career at it. My ego ’ s job was to protect me and ...

“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” ~Brené Brown Have you ever just wanted to relax, let go, and let yourself be? Why is this so challenging for so many? Why don’t we just live naturally and allow our authenticity to be felt, expressed, and seen? Well, when many of us were little, being authentic was not okay, so we focused on trying to do things the “right way” according to what others had to say, because our survival was at stake. The more we did this, the more we disconnected from our true essence. We’re not bad or wrong, we needed to do this in order to be loved and accepted instead of rejected, because to a child, being rejected is like death. The more we were shamed for how we were feeling, what we were doing, or how we were being, the more we learned that being true to ourselves was not okay. This was the beginning of self-abandoning— disconnecting from our authenticity and believing that there w...

“As rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, do not burden your heart with judgments but rain your kindness equally on all.”  ~Buddha Our burdens come in many forms. They are our relationships, our responsibilities, and our pasts that haunt us from beneath our consciousness. They weigh us down and prevent us from experiencing life’s true joy. Some people have to care for a sick family member most of their life. Some women give birth to stillborn babies. Some soldiers get their legs blown off while deployed. My story is unextraordinary: I’m a white, middle-class woman. My life has been easy, and I have no reason or right in this world to feel emotionally oppressed. And yet, for all my life, I’ve felt I was a burden to those around me. It all started, as many stories have, with my parents. My mother always told me about how she had to purchase books on strong willed children because I was “too much” as a toddler, and she didn’t know how to handle me. Both of my parents pushe...