Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings.” ~Mandy Hale I feel so alone right now. Like, crawling out of my skin, I’ll do anything I can do to not feel this way alone. I haven’t felt this way in a long time. Thank goodness I have tools to take care of myself . Let me explain. My earliest childhood memory is my mother’s empty bed. The sheets are white, untucked, and messy.  The duvet cover is loose and hanging halfway on the floor. The room is quiet, there’s no sign of mom, and I am all alone. That’s when I met loneliness for the first time. When I was three-and-a-half years old and my mom had just passed away. Loneliness came upon me before I could understand what was going on. It came upon me when I was unprotected and exposed, when I was vulnerable and needy, and it pierced me to my core. As I got older, loneliness made me feel unworthy and different—as if I was the only person in the world that felt that way. It made me feel flawed and defe...

TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with accounts of sexual harassment and assault and may be triggering to some people. “There can be a deep loneliness that comes from not having a family that has your back. I hope you can find supportive people who show up for you.” ~Laura Mohai I feel and have felt extreme sadness, anger, isolation, and fear over several sexual harassments and assaults in my life. The first time I was sexually assaulted I was seven. I was at a friend’s birthday pool party. My friend’s dad put his hand down my swimsuit and grabbed my undeveloped chest, then said that once “these” grow, I’d be irresistible and a hot f*ck. I was seven. After that, my stepfather bought the first pair of “sexy” underwear I ever had, when I was ten, and made me model them for him, among other things. From these early formative experiences, I wanted to hide from the world. My mom was cruel and never protected me. She knew my stepdad would leer after me and that I hid in my closet. She ...

“What seems to be clear is that we humans are an accumulation of our traumatic experiences, that each trauma contributes to our biology, and that this biology determines, to some extent, how we respond to further traumatic events as they emerge in our lives.” ~Shaili Jain The stigma of mental health is decreasing. That’s wonderful, but the way we’re doing it is wrong and damaging. We are ignoring the trauma that is so prevalent and pervasive in our society. Think about how many times you’ve read something equating mental illness to cancer or some other disease. People say that taking medication for mental illness should be considered the same as taking medicine for blood pressure, cholesterol, or other medical issues. The phrase “chemical imbalance” is used quite often when referring to mental illness. There is a connection, but there’s so much more to mental illness than that. When we say that mental illness is simply a result of a chemical imbalance, we are pretending our traum...

“If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness.” ~Tara Brach This morning I received a WhatsApp message, and I found myself immediately blown into a state of fury. On the surface the message didn’t seem inflammatory or dramatic; it was a simple request from another parent asking me to do something that wasn’t convenient for me. On the surface it didn’t seem like this message warranted such rage. The anger exploded inside my body, and I immediately wanted to ring the person who had messaged me. I wanted to shout and scream at them. And I wanted to blame. I didn’t ring them. I hate the anger, but what I hate more is conflict . To ring someone up and start throwing blame and anger at them would be deeply terrifying to me. I also wanted to stomp and shout, “This isn’t fair! I hate you! Why are you so selfish?” I didn’t d...

This post is for anyone who stresses themselves out trying to control life. Which I’m guessing means it’s for most people. It’s easy to convince ourselves we have power over things we don’t—as if we can force people and situations to go our way simply by trying or pushing harder. The world would feel a lot safer if this were true. If people did what we thought was best, situations worked out as we believed they should, and nothing challenging or painful ever caught us off guard. But some things are simply uncontrollable, and it’s exhausting and futile to obsess over them—not to mention disempowering, since we can’t control what’s in our power when we’re fixated on things that aren’t. As a recovering control freak, I know this all too well. I also know how scary it is to let go and trust that things will somehow be okay, or that I can handle it if things fall apart. These days I try to focus more on the latter, since that’s something I can control. I can’t control what’s coming, ...

“There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.”  ~Robert Henri, The Art Spirit In my twenties, I worked for a Fortune 500 company at 401 North Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. It was fun to work in the city, and my office overlooked Lake Michigan—I never got tired of the stunning view. Weekends were spent with friends eating at unique ethnic restaurants and visiting comedy clubs, blues bars, art galleries, museums, and theater. Chicago is a thriving city with a vibrant cultural life. I had a great time. I eventually went on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and after I completed the degree, everything in my external world nudged me to “get out there and do great things.” Fellow students were receiving grants, fellowships, and prestigious tenure-track positions at major research universities. My advisor (Mihaly Csikszentmihal...

“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” ~African Proverb It is just past ten in the morning on a Tuesday. My wet boardshorts and blue tank top are drying at lightning speed in the sweltering South Indian sun. I am feeling alive and exhilarated after my surf session in the surreal blue, bathtub-warm Arabian Sea. Surfing waves consistently has been my goal for the past two years, and I’m doing it. Which is pretty awesome considering that I never thought I would surf again. The trauma and fear from a surfing accident ten years ago, that nearly knocked my teeth out, was still lodged in my body for years, and my life’s focus had shifted from sports to yoga. When I landed in Kerala, India, my intention was to do an intensive period of study with my Ashtanga yoga teacher for ten weeks and then return to Rishikesh in Northern India, where I had been basing myself. A chance invitation brought me to the coastal town I have been living in for the past two-pl...

“We can all make powerful choices. We can all take back control by not blaming chance, fate, or anyone else for our outcome. It’s within our ability to cause everything to change. Rather than letting past hurtful experiences sap our energy and sabotage our success, we can use them to fuel positive, constructive change.” ~Darren Hardy I parked my car and began to walk toward the mall while covering my puffy eyes with black sunglasses. I was fresh out of a session with my therapist, where I had hit a breaking point. We both came to the conclusion that I use self-punishment as an approach to almost all of life. As I was crossing the parking lot, all I could think of was: “How could I not see it? How could I be so oblivious to my inner dialogue and the actions I take to punish myself? Am I a hidden masochist without any sense of awareness? I should do better than this!” Considering that I used self-sabotage as one of my survival behaviors, coming down on myself for not doing better wa...

Do you ever feel like calling into the day? And I don’t just mean work. I mean everything. I mean turning it all off for a while. Freezing the full gamut of this messy human experience—the regrets, the fears, the adulting, the drama. The constant onslaught of anxiety-inducing news and personal problems to face. When everyone needs you and everything worries you and nothing helps you feel better, it’s tempting to disconnect. To numb out, shut down, or give up. But we can’t, at least not for long. And really, that’s not what we want. Or at least, that’s not what I want when I’m overwhelmed by it all. I don’t really want life to stop. When my relationships are triggering, my workload is mounting, and my kids needs feel hard to meet, I don’t really want to escape it all. I want to rise above it all. I want to respond wisely and make best of what’s in front of me instead of reacting impulsively and only making things worse. I don’t want to disconnect; I want to reconnect—with the still...

“When it’s time for something new, you will feel it. You will feel a desire to let go, to shed layers, to move, to re-create. You will know because there will be subtle shifts all around you. You will release the old because you are really clearing the path for what’s ahead. Trust the process.” ~Brianna Wiest I landed myself in the ER three days short of my twenty-fifth birthday, due to a mental health crisis. It was January, always a difficult month for me. The holiday season tends to be stressful, and I’d recently visited my parents back home, which had led to a resurfacing of depressive and anxious symptoms. It was also a month filled with anniversaries, and the winter weather and early darkness affected my mood in a negative way. And of course, my fourth year English literature seminar had left me feeling so overwhelmed, I believed I’d never be able to graduate from university. I’ve been caught up in the same pattern for many years. The fallout of my hospitalization had left m...