A User’s Guide for Adding ‘No’ to Your Vocabulary
This post is Part 2 of a series. I ended Part 1 of this series on learning to say “no” by asking the question, How do we give ourselves permission to start incorporating ‘no’ into our life, and indeed into our very identity? How do we start living differently—with boundaries? The very uncomplicated answer is that we just do it; we […]
The Likability Cage: Are Women Still Trapped?
Thirty-five years ago, my sorority sister was raped at a fraternity party. She didn’t report it for reasons we can guess, having heard this story a thousand times by now. Indeed, it was the clichéd story: the popular, handsome fraternity boy from a powerful family who happened to be a big donor to the university […]
Are You Ready to Stop Being a Victim?
A victim, according to Webster’s dictionary, is a person who has been attacked, injured, robbed, killed, cheated or fooled by someone else, or harmed by an unpleasant event. Everyone gets attacked, injured, cheated, fooled and harmed during their life, if not physically then emotionally. And everyone gets harmed by unpleasant events. We’re all victims, in […]
Are You On Your Own Side? How to Take Good Care of Yourself From the Inside Out
Have you ever wondered why we’re so bad at self-care, why taking care of ourselves is so difficult for us human beings, and not simply inborn? Every week, another book comes out on how to take better care of ourselves. So why are we not getting it? For one thing, our self-care approach in this culture is […]
Are You Friends With Yourself?
Self-Care is an Inside Job Have you ever wondered why we’re so bad at self-care, why taking care of ourselves is so difficult for us human beings, and not simply inborn? Every week, another book comes out on how to take better care of ourselves. So why are we not getting it? For one thing, our self-care […]
When Is It Time to Stop Trying to Fix Ourselves?
Are you a self-help junkie? Even if you don’t have a stack of books on your bedside table detailing the newest ways to fix yourself, you still might be. And it wouldn’t be your fault if you were. Our conditioning from a very young age is to believe that we need to become better, new and improved versions of ourselves, even […]
How to Look Out for Yourself
There are times in life when things fall apart, when we lose something deeply important, something that made us feel connected, grounded or safe. Sometimes a lot of things fall apart at the same time. There are times in life, for everyone, when it feels like all our safety nets get cut, and we are […]
The Most Important Question Of All: How Can I Help?
Something amazing happened to me. It was a very small event, but an event that is disappearing from our world, growing extinct. Because of how much it moved and surprised me, I find that I can’t stop thinking about it. And so, I write this blog today to honor a practice that is now the […]
Self-Parenting 101: Learning to Take Your Own Side
How would you treat yourself if you were someone you loved? This is one of my favorite questions. It is not only instinctive to take good care of someone you love, but also to take good care of yourself. Unfortunately, we are trained to un-learn our loving instincts when it comes to ourselves. Many people […]