Last time I wrote a post like this, I was in Portland with a desk in the corner of our living room. Now, I’m in Connecticut, still in a corner, but this time I’m in our office.
My life and my work have upgraded. That’s the heart of this post and what I want to tell you about.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreAre you turning to your relationships for support or have you made it a habit to go at life alone?
Let’s start with the science before I tell you a story about vertigo.
In the New York Times, Eric Ravenscraft writes, “Research from U.C.L.A. suggests that putting your feelings into words — a process called ‘affect labeling’ — can diminish the response of the amygdala when you encounter things that are upsetting. This is how, over time, you can become less stressed over something that bothers you.”
Read MoreI’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.
Read MoreAre 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.
Read MoreI’ve plopped my laptop on our windowsill to write this to you. I’m sitting on my pup’s bed because our couch is still not here. Today I almost cried on the phone to the customer service rep, who is most definitely not at fault for the month long delay or the deep desire in my heart to feel a little more settled in our home than I feel right now, but who got the diatribe of my frustration all the same.
Because sometimes we just can’t help it, you know? I’m trying my best out there in a world that doesn’t always meet me where I am and I know you’re trying your best too. I know you see the good in your day, just as much as you notice the bad. But, I also know it’s harder to shake the bad, especially alone.
Read MoreI didn’t mean to pull together a starter kit on creativity and artistic development, but I’m glad I did. Whether I was listening to Matthew McConaughey or flipping through Lisa Congdon’s imagination, these books helped spark something inside of me that had been dormant for a long time — my desire to fail. McConaughey has a whole section of his book dedicated to telling tell me all about that one time he had to throw “it” all away in order to get the kind of roles he wasn’t getting naturally asked to play. All of these books help you define what “it” (how you see creativity now vs how you want to see it) is and then offer up a roadmap that challenges you to grow.
Oftentimes being stagnant within our creativity comes at the heels of a some success or major “aha” moments. We’ve found something that works well and we stop trying to understand how to make it work better. I’ve been writing and creating content for 8 years now and I’d forgotten how to study the craft. I’d grown to the point of assuming that I would always be typecast for the kind of writing or content creation I was known for so there was no point in pushing my boundaries, but then this year something shifted for me.
Read MoreI’ve heard this time get called “re-entry”, which makes sense because we are re-entering. No season has ever felt like more of a re-entrance than this one. We moved from Portland back to the east coast before our first anniversary on the west coast. We did it all in under a week and it felt similar to the whiplash that came with the wave of COVID vaccinations across the nation. One day I had finally gotten to know the ground that I was standing on (after trying so hard to understand it since March 2020), only to have the entire planet turned upside on.
Admittedly, all in a great way. Both re-entry into our east coast life and into a post-quarantine world have been what I’ve been praying about for the last year. I’ve yearned for a time where seeing our friends and family felt easier and less risky. I wanted a time where we felt more at peace in our own home because it didn’t have to be the only place we existed in anymore.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreI signed up for a writing habits class back in December. My top goal when I signed up was that I wanted to have a more consistent, sustainable relationship with my writing practice. I wanted to rebuild my habit from scratch mostly because by the end of 2020 I felt like I had very little of it to hold onto anyway. While I didn’t talk about this publicly, I spent a better half of last year working on a book proposal that didn’t end up selling.
From a marketing and business perspective, I completely understood the why and the how. On a personal level, I was gutted. The book was memoir personal essays and not selling it felt like the world reflecting back to me that I wasn’t a good writer, that my story had no value, and that I couldn’t write the kind of stories I wanted to spend my time on.
Read MoreBefore we got a puppy in 2020, my boyfriend and I spent just as much time traveling as we did in NYC. Our work required us to travel often and visiting family meant getting on short flights regularly. While I know I don’t want to go back to the level of travel I was doing pre-covid, I know travel will still be a part of our lives and we considered this when getting a puppy.
Our move to Portland was the first time we went on a plane with Chauncey and he did so well. I had the benefit of having his emotional support animal paperwork completed which allowed me to take him out of his carrier and cuddle him, both for my support and his.
Read MoreOver 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.
Read MoreWe have lived in Portland now for more than half a year. Time has moved both so quickly and so slowly.
For context, moving across the country to Oregon from New York last fall wasn’t a decision we made lightly as a family or for me on a personal level. Leaving New York was the first time in my life that I’ve lived somewhere other than New York City. We left behind our friends, the environment our careers thrived on, and my family. All of this aside, if I had to sum our move up in one sentence it would be — the best decision of my life.
Read MoreI’ve been writing these recaps monthly since January and am officially entering the second quarter of the year feeling pretty proud of myself. Writing down my mental wellness routine is a new habit for me. I, like most people, got used to managing my mental health on a day-to-day basis and never put time aside to see the routines I was forming.
Comparing the last few months to each other has made it clear that I’ve been missing out on an opportunity to understand myself better. In January I was pretty locked in on growth and setting up a successful morning routine for myself, but if you jump to March’s wellness routine you can see just how much the winter months impacted me.
Read MoreI think I’ve lived with anxiety my entire life. I can remember being 7 years old and telling my mom that I had a really bad stomach ache and didn’t want to get in the car. She thought I was just feeling physically off, but looking back I know now that my stomachache was a symptom to a larger reality. My anxiety manifests in my stomach, in the tension in my shoulders, and in a looming fear over most things in my life.
I wasn’t officially treated for anxiety until I was 21 years old and started therapy. My long-term care routine for my anxiety has up until now been talk therapy. It’s helped me so much to have a dedicated space where I can work through the ins and outs of how (and sometimes why) my anxiety manifests. I’ve written before that this last winter re-triggered a lot of dormant fears and anxious reactions. It has been a time when I’ve especially turned to the small ways I can help myself manage.
Read MoreIt is April and the sun is officially out in Portland. After a few months of struggling with my mental health it’s also starting to feel like I have a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to how I’ve been feeling. I’ll dive in more on a separate post about what this past winter has taught me, but first I want to share how intentional I’m being with spring cleaning.
Last weekend I started dividing up my books into two piles, those I was going to donate and those I was going to keep. I’ve been committing to a more minimalist lifestyle, which includes paring down my closet and most of the things that I keep just for the sake of keeping them. I’m embracing the same spring cleaning tactics when it comes to my mental health.
Read MoreDuring one of my first therapy sessions way back when, my therapist lovingly stared my way and said, “You need things outside of yourself to help anchor you on bad days.” At the time of her telling me this, my bad days were very, very bad. My hours were consumed with anxiety or depressive thoughts. The idea of cultivating a full roster of actions or safe spaces I could turn to on bad days felt incredibly difficult because I barely had the energy to walk out of the apartment in the first place.
Thinking back on those days, it was the most humbling season of my life. The perfectionist and problem solver in me wanted to be able to sit down for 15 minutes and brainstorm her way to a quick fix. Mental health doesn’t work on quick fixes though. Each day became a challenge and a reminder that the only way out of a bad day was through it and the only way through it was with acceptance and understanding the difference between what I could do and what I wanted to do.
Read MoreFebruary was by far one of my hardest months yet. I kept my mental wellness routine simple as a result of knowing that going back to the basics was going to be what served me best. My biggest struggle (or trigger) over the last few months has been how rainy and grey it has been. I’d never been one to wrestle with much seasonal depression, but this year it hit me tenfold.
What helped over the last few weeks was to stay to myself and to simultaneously give myself things to look forward to. March’s wellness routine has consisted of more of the same.
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