I’ve been off the pill for almost a full year (this October) and there are so many things I wish I would have known before coming off. Unfortunately, wellness and women’s health in general are such hard topics to find information about on the Internet. I read a really great article in the New York Times this week that outlined just how poorly the healthcare system treats women and ways that anyone (but especially those who are oftentimes mistreated by the healthcare system) can advocate for themselves more forcefully.

Have you felt the energy shifting around us? I know that everyone keeps talking about this New Moon in Leo — I’m a believer of astrology without ever truly fully understanding what “New Moon in Leo” actually means. BUT, I believe the energy is different around me and that momentum is building for all the good things.

Over the last few months I’ve been reworking my relationship to money. I’ve documented it openly in hopes that it would help others feel less alone if they were learning how to manage their finances too. I’ve learned that an easy day for impulse spending are holidays that offer heavily discounted items you had no plans to purchase before the discount. Amazon’s Prime Day is this July 12th and July 13th and it's hard to ignore or to not want to add a million things to your cart.

It took me a very long time (almost 8 years) to realize that birth control pills just weren’t for me. The straw that broke the camel’s back happened last fall when I realized a new brand I’d started in April (with a slightly new formula) was one of the culprits behind an onset of depression. I finally made the decision to come off the pill at the end of September 2021 and have had 5 menstrual cycles completely off birth control for the first time since my early twenties.

I’ve been sharing on Instagram recently that we started with a new dog trainer once we moved back east. We found Kate LaSala, founder of Rescued by Training, through our doggy daycare and since our first assessment she’s been our trustworthy guide.

The main mountain we’re looking to overcome right now is that Chauncey is not yet able to stay home alone. Any time we’ve tried over the last few months, he’s either completely panicked, whimpered, and cried, or he’s pooped himself out of pure fear. We’d tried all the methods — leaving him out of the crate, leaving him in the crate, leaving him with a kong, etc. Ultimately the only method that has shown results has been Kate’s.

I’ve written three other posts about puppy separation anxiety and puppy blues since we got Chauncey a little over a year ago. The journey with his general anxiety and his separation anxiety have taken us on a rollercoaster that we were ill equipped to ride. Over the last few months especially, as we moved back east, it was apparent that we needed extra help.

Later this week I’ll be sharing a Q+A with our dog trainer and she answers some of the top questions you all had on the subject. I’m hoping both that post and this one (a bit more personal one) will help you through your puppy separation anxiety journey.

I’ve been thinking a lot about self-care and self-improvement this week. My mind has specifically gone to how we describe our life when it’s at its fullest or we’re at our most cared for. Do we call it complacency or do we see fulfillment? Are we constantly drawn by the promise of “more” simply because it’s deemed the antithesis of “settling” or is more actually what we’re after?

We all have different answers to those questions. If you pick up An Ordinary Age by Rainesford Stauffer you’ll be able to read some of them.

I struggled on what to title this blog post because “how to love yourself” or “self-love is possible” feels thin. Anyone would argue that simply “believing” you’re going to like yourself more tomorrow doesn’t actually move the needle on how much (or how little) you like yourself. Particularly if your starting point is in the negatives, which if we’re honest is most of us.

Our society cultivates humans who thrive on self-mutilation as a means to building power or a “backbone” or thick skin. We grow up believing the only way we’re going to be better humans is if we punish ourselves for the times we’re not. It’s addition by subtraction. As someone who’s lived with disordered eating most of her life, I can attest to the connection between “doing something bad or being bad” and “deprivation as a punishment” can be slippery and traumatizing.

I’ve never been more afraid to get results back from a test. Let’s just start there. I also didn’t decide until after I got my results back that I would share that I took a fertility test in the first place.

Because I know conversations around fertility can be layered and triggering, I want to share upfront where I’m coming from, so that you can close the tab if this isn’t for you.

Are you overpacking your self-care routine? I don’t think we ask ourselves this question enough. I’m editing an interview I did with Rainesford Stauffer, author of An Ordinary Age, and it’s one of the main topics we discussed. The economy around personal development has become so fruitful that everyone from big brands to smaller influencers (like me) are conscious of how much money comes in and out of pushing products, or lifestyle choices, or a routine that honestly may not really make sense for your real life.

I’m incredibly aware that the lines between self-care and consumerism are overlapping more than they ever have. It’s prompted me to revisit how and what I share with my community. I choose to embrace a less is more approach in my own life because less is more manageable, more intentional, and less driven by the comparison game. I rotate what my “less” is regularly because I’m always trying new things and that’s the process I’ve chosen to share with you all.

The last two months prompted some unexpected, but welcomed changes in my day-to-day life. The biggest physical change is by far moving back to the east coast (we’re living in CT now!), but it’s the smaller changes that I’m noticing have shifted more of my mood and perspective on life. After letting go of some of the more energy-sucking habits I’d been holding onto, I feel less tense in the shoulders and less spiraling in my thoughts. I hadn’t realize how things like Twitter made me feel on a daily basis because I’d been on it for so long. I’d gotten used to the sense of dread that came with doom-scrolling and felt like that’s just what my day had to include.

I didn’t go into kicking the below habits intentionally. Life getting so busy, so quickly, forced me into having to prioritize moving and more immediate work needs and left me little time for anything else. Now that we’re in our new home though and I’m getting time back in droves, it turns out these are habits I don’t want to pick up again.

Over the last few months at least 60% of my Google searches have included the words “puppy” and “separation anxiety.” When we first got our mini-dachshund he didn’t present anxious. He was vivacious, hilarious, and super cuddly. He still is all of those things, but in addition over the last year he’s struggled with both social anxiety and separation anxiety.

After talking to many vets, his overall experience isn’t that strange for a puppy who has been brought up in quarantine times. We are the only humans he interacts with regularly and for a long time in his puppyhood he didn’t even have the chance to really interact with other dogs.

There were so many things that I couldn’t have imagined would come with puppy parenthood — long nights, unexpected “do we think he actually ate that?” accidents, and lately a big focus on both our puppy’s mental health and our own.

We got Chauncey last spring when we were already a few months into lockdown in New York City. Given his age (he’ll be 1-year-old on March 9th!) the only world he’s really known includes us being home all the time and having very limited contact with other humans or the outside environment. We didn’t realize just how much this small world setup would impact him until he got all his shots and was able to start going on walks in NYC. He hated it. We would have to drag him to make it as far as the corner and we’d both be frustrated and anxious that we would just turn back around and go home.

Towards the end of last year a few things became abundantly clear to me:

1. I am closer to 30 than I am to 20

2. I had no real physical health routines that grounded me in the midst of life changes

3. My body had taken a big toll over the last few months because I was walking a lot less

I’m so committed to my mental wellness routines that I sometimes forget I live in my body and that a part of that is a responsibility to nourish it in the right ways. Every part of our being is interconnected and ignoring one part sends ripple effects through them all. I know this because at the end of 2020, I was feeling the most sluggish, bloated, and uncomfortable in my body that I have ever felt.

January was a rough month. Apparently I’m not alone because we’re all seemingly hitting the same COVID wall, at the same exact time. In an effort to try to bring myself some joy and comfort, I’ve been working to list out the better habits that have come from a whole year mostly at home. I wrote about my list making habit earlier this week.

At the top of that list is that I’ve been making more and more time to read. I spent so much of the beginning of my career hustling to be as productive as possible and traveling a ton that if I got through one book a month it would be a miracle. Now I’m getting through so many and they’re bringing me joy in different ways.

I forgot how to date myself. My long days in coffee shops, wanderings into little shops, or traveling (oh man, traveling!) were all replaced by couch time and more couch time. It didn’t happen all at once - it happened across an entire year.

I was looking through the pictures in my phone and at the top of 2020 it’s image after image of a daily life I miss so much and that is still whiles away. I won’t be back to London any time soon. Working out of a different coffee shop every other day won’t be a part of my regular routine for as long as COVID is a part of my regular routine.

I started taking yoga classes back in 2019. I only ever took one per week and the level was ultra-beginner. I loved it. My goals when practicing those yoga classes weren’t (and still really aren’t) about acing it, but instead about learning what “practice” actually means.

A bit of that intention was lost during lock-down. Since lock-down started last March, I’ve turned to YWA videos on days when I needed something specific, whether it was to stretch or to simply feel calmer, but I had a hard time sticking to a regular practice. I’ve landed on it being a perfection thing for me, something I’m actively working on in therapy. I grew up always striving for perfection, but now that I’m settling into my late 20s, I’m especially craving different things than what that perfection has ever offered.

I didn’t know where we were going for my birthday. Tyler had planned it all. It was amazing. Not only because it’s really nice to have someone else take on logistics, but because I am huge on birthdays (big days in general) and adding thoughtfulness to make a moment out of them.

A month ahead of my birthday, all I knew were the dates I had to block off on my calendar, that we were going somewhere where I probably wouldn’t have phone service, and that it was COVID-safe.