Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” ~Naomi Shihab Nye I knew it was around that time. When I opened my eyes, it was pitch black outside and I couldn’t yet hear the chickens in the distance waking up. It was 4 a.m. again. In the past few days, I have loved this gift of jet lag; transitioning to a thirteen-hour time change has afforded me this dark, mysterious quiet that has woken up inside of me the place from which I write—a place that spontaneously arises when the conditions are such that something flows through me. However, next to me in my bed, my daughter slept soundly. I lay there, paying attention to and feeling my body breathe, sensations arising and falling, and thinking about life—the past, present, and future. As I lay there, I noticed the sweet ebb and flow of my breath and the glorious feel of the air from the fan washing over my warm and rested body. Yet on this particular morning, I noti...

In many cultures, food is an expression of love. Sometimes, as was the case for me growing up as a child of immigrants, food might be the only expression of love. My parents were not very affectionate or communicative about love. My dad gives classic awkward-dad hugs, where he pats your back with self-conscious uncertainty from a good foot and a half away. My mom hit me so frequently and unexpectedly that my body learned to flinch anytime she got too close. My childhood was punctuated by seasons of my mom’s depression. Ramen and Pizza Hut boxes marked how long a particular bout of depression was. My mom would sometimes go weeks without changing out of her pale pink nightgown or opening her bedroom blinds. During these dark days, if she did get out of bed, she moved zombie-like through the house, no sign of vibrancy in her eyes. And then something would somehow shift. I would always wait in desperate hope for this shift. I would know the tide was turning when the kitchen would come...

Well, all good things must come to an end, and that time has come for the Feel-Good Summer Bundle Sale . Before I give you one last reminder of all this spectacular bundle has to offer… I’ve always believed in the power of one. One realization can open your mind. One shift in perspective can transform your experience of the world. One decision can change the trajectory of your life. The one realization that changed my life nearly two decades ago is that life is not what happens to us; it’s how we respond to it. That led to a shift in perspective: If I am not my mistakes or my struggles, then I don’t have to wallow in shame. Instead, I can be proud of what I do with them. And that led to a powerful decision: to get the help I needed to heal and then help others do the same. I’d spent over a decade struggling with depression, bulimia, and c-PTSD, and I’d gotten help before, but I never truly believed I deserved it. It’s hard to heal if you think you deserve to hurt. But that on...

“Highly sensitive people are too often perceived as weaklings or damaged goods. To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate.”~Anthon St. Maarten There are some words that get painfully etched into our memories as if with a red-hot poker. For me, growing up, those words were “you’re too sensitive.” I often caught this phrase in the fumbling hands of my shame after someone chucked it at me with callousness and superiority as a means to justify their cruelty. They may have said something vicious or condescending in private, or told embarrassing stories or outright lies about me in public. Either way, the results were the same: I’d take it personally, get emotionally overwhelmed, then either explode in anger or sob. But it wasn’t just cruelty that evoked my sensitivity, and I didn’t cry only when obviously provoked. Well-meaning people, who generally treated me with kindness, would gently remind me I’m too sensitive when I...

Hi friends! I’m excited to announce that Tiny Buddha’s Feel-Good Summer bundle is now available for purchase! For the next 10 days only, you can get 11 life-changing tools—valued at over $2,400 combined—for the price of one. That comes to an incredible savings of 96% off! For those of you who purchased the last bundle, I listened to your feedback and aimed to make this bundle less overwhelming, with fewer courses but a higher overall value. Also, just FYI, though you’ll see some of the same faces, their programs are new this time around. I’m particularly excited about the offerings because I know many would have helped me during some of the darkest times of my life. Having  spent years hating myself and self-destructing due to narcissistic abuse, I’m sure could have healed a lot sooner with the help of the Narcissist Abuse Recovery Program—led by Melanie Tonia Evans, one of the world’s leading authorities in this field. As someone who formerly struggled with bulimia for over a ...

“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” ~M. Scott Peck Have you ever been in a situation or a stage in your life where you’ve felt physically stuck, as if you’ve fallen into some kind of invisible quicksand that you can’t get out of? Or maybe it’s felt more like you have a thick, invisible elastic band around your waist, and no matter how hard you push forward, it pulls against you, holding you in place? Or maybe it’s like a sky-high brick wall that you can’t find your way through, around, or over? Getting stuck in life can feel frustrating, annoying, upsetting, and confusing. And if you’ve been stuck for too long or at a time when you really need to move forward, you’ve probably found yourself panicking and feeling afraid because if ...

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” ~Abraham Maslow A few years ago I decided to take a break from alcohol , and I also decided I would probably be lonely, miserable, and boring for the duration of my break. I’d allowed a lot of social conditioning to affect me, and I was sure people who didn’t drink either had no friends, had hit a drastic rock-bottom, or had no fun. I didn’t know if I was going to find happiness or even contentment on the other side of my drinking career, and this worried me. I began to examine those thoughts and feelings around my drinking and brought my behaviors into a sharper focus. It led me to… Awareness (of my drinking habits) I look back and can now and clearly see that I was, for a very long time, a gray area drinker. A gray area drinker is someone who falls into the bracket between never drinking and physical alcohol dependency. Society tends to view problematic drinking in black and white terms. “You’re an ...

“The body heals with play, the mind heals with laughter, and the spirit heals with joy.” ~Unknown   Today, I want to give thanks for two of the special God-given gifts I feel grateful to possess: my sense of humor and my sense of optimism. Every time I’ve tripped and fallen or have been kicked down into the dirt during my life—when I’ve landed on my bottom, or my face, covered in muck, with bruises throbbing and scrapes stinging—I’ve always been able to crack a smile and let out a laugh.   In 2018, I found out that my husband of twelve years, with whom I had created four beautiful little lives, had been having an affair with a co-worker. He had left the family abruptly the year before, with no explanation. But on Valentine’s Day, of all days, the truth was revealed.   I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of it all. It was like something out of a Lifetime movie, except it was my life, and there were no cameras. Rather than succumb to the sorrow I felt, I chose instead to...

“Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live.” ~Jim Rohn I hear this happens to so many, but when it happens to you, it’s unsettling. I didn’t know what was going on with me, and I wasn’t getting any satisfying answers either. Most days were good, and I felt fine and went about my regular routine wearing my many hats: mother of two young kids, human mom to three fur babies, a household-manager-of-all-the-things and full-time dental hygienist. And then out of the blue, it could hit me like a ton of bricks… the backache, neck pain, jaw pain, tension headaches, and even migraines. I would wake up in the morning with tension or pain in my body, but I had no idea how it got there! Sometimes it was pretty intense too, It would drive me bananas because I couldn’t put my finger on the reason why. Didn’t do any yard work yesterday. Didn’t hurt myself. Didn’t trip or fall. Didn’t shovel snow the last few days either. It was so strange. I had no idea what was going on. I re...

“If you get stuck, draw with a different pen. Change your tools; it may free your thinking.” ~Paul Arden For a year and a half, I could feel a career shift coming. I had worked hard to cultivate a career I loved, but I began feeling disconnected from my work. The meaning I had originally felt from it was no longer there. Each time I started a new project, I felt tired and unmotivated. At first, I thought it might be burnout. So I took a few weeks off to see if I could reset myself into feeling excited about my work again. But when I returned, I felt the same. The things that I had built my career around, that previously gave me energy and meaning, no longer resonated. I thought about the type of work I did daily and couldn’t imagine myself still doing it ten years from now. But what could I imagine myself doing? I had no idea. I struggled and strived to figure out what a career shift might look like. I read several books, including Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by ...

“The strongest hearts have the most scars.” ~Unknown I always hated pain when growing up. For as long as I can remember I tried to avoid it. Physical pain was uncomfortable, but emotional pain was the real torture. It was sometimes easier to have a fight and stop communicating than to have a challenging conversation. Disconnecting emotionally and withdrawing from painful experiences was my de facto subconscious strategy. I still pursued goals and succeeded, but this didn’t feel painful to me because I used my passion and bravado to drive through the long hours and grueling work. If I wasn’t avoiding pain, I was in denial. It cost me. Ignoring a painful feeling made me numb all over. Denying an unpleasant emotion made me oblivious to the whole spectrum of sensations. Avoiding dentists created more issues and massive bills down the road. Dodging challenging scenarios and boredom cost me passions and hobbies that could have led to a different career or a creative outlet. This contin...