• Rise Above.

    Lately, I’ve been having a hard time keeping my mouth shut.  Having made sacrifices for people who don’t acknowledge or appreciate how I’m hurting myself for their benefit has been tolling.  So badly, I want to just yell at them and say, “You did this!  You didn’t do that!  You are this way!  It is your problem!”  I’ve had to muster up a lot of strength to not blame and shame.   In the age of social media, moving on from people who have hurt us can be difficult.  With each post that pops up on our feed, it is a painful reminder of what could have, should have, was or isn’t.  Being the stubborn person that I am,…

  • Grief.

    Suffering is part of human existence.  This is fact.  Every person in the world has lost something of significance and gone into a process of grieving.  Grief takes on different forms for different people.  Some numb pain; some deny through avoidance, and some lean into the pain.  Loss is unavoidable.  Grief comes after loss, and psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross believed that there are 5 stages of grief.  They are: Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance There has been criticisms of this grief theory among social scientists.  I don’t love it or hate it.  I do think grief is a process, but I don’t necessarily think there is a structure (that we grieve in this consecutive order).  Grief affects…

  • Adversity.

    The definition of adversity is “a state or instance of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.”  State or instance – which means that it can be constant or a one-time difficulty or misfortune.  Nothing in the definition refers to the intensity or severity of this difficulty or misfortune, yet it seems to me that many people tend to associate adversity with tragedy or sacrifice.  Even I do this!  (Yes, it says “serious”, but that is subjective and irrelevant for where I’m going with this. 😒) In the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Manson says, “For many of us, our proudest achievements come in the face of the greatest…