I cannot live without them. I’ve always had a near-overwhelming amount of honesty with people. Ask me a question and odds are, I can’t hide or hold back what’s going on. To my detriment occasionally? Sure. But more importantly I feel so much better when I’m honest. It’s something that I don’t necessarily choose consciously.…

Are powerful. Not the fun party kind. The narratives we recite to ourselves and build up about our lives and the people in them. They. Are. Everywhere. It’s very sneaky, what they do. I’m really only noticing my stories for the first time. Just like a lot of things we carry with us for a…

TW: Suicidal ideation/attempts, Self-harm This will be a doozy, so buckle up and proceed with caution. This is not a feel good post. Out of all the heavier topics I want to write about, this one hurts the most by far. When I think about all the struggles I’ve been through, my strongest memories are…

Because of the holidays my therapist and I didn’t see each other for 3 weeks. It was sooooo nice being back with her. As much as I’m learning to self-therapize a little, nothing beats an experienced and educated professional. I am learning to appreciate how the downs or absences make the ups much more noticeable.…

For some reason that term is really calling to me today. To me it symbolizes all the stuff that is no longer serving you that keeps sticking around anyway. Maybe it never served you. I know my traumas were complex and substantial, but I also know that mental health conditions have fed into making my…

I was raised in American schools, which deserve their poor reputation for providing a good education. Not to say I felt mine was awful, it just had a looot of room for improvement. The thing about entering a structured learning environment from the age of 6 is that the vast majority of your life experience…

I enjoy them immensely. Yet there’s a nagging voice in my head that tells me I’m wasting my time. It’s been an ongoing debate in my head for decades. The time-wasting narrative has been the victor most of the time. Even now I find it hard to argue. But it goes deeper than the activity…

Somehow this rings so true within me. It certainly wasn’t something I believed at all for all of my life. But recently it really turned around. Describing it is tough, but I’d say it is both a feeling of personal resilience as well as trust. I can handle whatever comes in my life and I…

I really struggle with it. I can say I’m not at square one, but maybe square 3. A lot of my daily frustrations and worries about my life come from my lack of self-acceptance. If you couldn’t tell, I think and reflect a lot about myself and my journey. Trauma and my years of depression…

It just feels worse doesn’t it? And being aware of that is hard. I remind myself often that my moods and thoughts about myself or how life is going shift frequently and strongly. If I get a bad night’s sleep (or 2 or 3) then life feels a bit dimmer. It becomes “easier” to think…