We are all part of a living system.
I believe that who we are—how we show up in the world, how we treat others—is more important than what we do.
I’ve also experienced that, when we change how we are in the world, the world around us changes.
This is a recipe for healing.
For more than half my life, I was on ever-increasing amounts of psychiatric medication for intractable anxiety and depression.
In 2010, I tapered off meds and began searching for ways to rewire my brain for inner peace. Today, I’m one of the most content people I know (well, most of the time).
I write about the practices that have helped me.
Spoiler alert: It mostly comes down to walking, nature, mindfulness and acceptance.
Reflecting on a Year of Change
It's been 18 months since I last posted, yet Living the Mess has been on my mind every day. While I haven't been writing posts for this site, as a friend pointed out, I have been living the mess and so experiencing source material for future posts. It didn't seem...
Five Mindfulness Lessons from Moving
Moving is, by definition, massive change. It may not be possible to have a move that isn’t complex, but it can be (almost) stress-free.
Leaning into Fear and Uncertainty
Renting is a good lesson in stewardship: Nothing is truly ours; we just have responsibility for things for a little while.
We Don’t Know Anything, Really
None of us really knows what we're talking about. Not me, not you, not anybody else. I mean, we know some relative things about living on this planet, but in the big picture, the absolute? Nothing. We live in a culture where there's a premium on having the answers....
The Lifespan of an Emotion
In neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor’s memoir, My Stroke of Insight, she notes that the physiological lifespan of an emotion in the body and brain is 90 seconds. The sensations—adrenalin, heat in the face, tightness in the throat, rapid heartbeat—arise, peak and...
Separating Facts from Stories
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti Stories are how we make sense of events in our lives. We string together a narrative so that life doesn’t seem entirely random. In some situations, this is...
Snowstorm as a Metaphor
The accumulated snow from the past two weeks finally began melting today, as temperatures moved slightly above freezing for the first time in...what seems like a very long time. As I was walking, I passed the juniper bush in the photo above. It's right around the...
Labels are for Jars
The very first thing I did, on my path to healing, was to stop labeling my brain. This was a huge shift. Labels had been my crutch for years. I’d been an active and eager participant in finding external reasons why I was the way I...
There is Nothing Wrong With You
We live in a culture that sells the promise of 24/7 productivity (without even asking if that’s desirable), constant giddy happiness, creativity that never gets blocked, financial wealth and endless sexual vitality. Oh, and perfect pores. That’s not life. That’s what we tend to label ‘mania.’ (Except the wealth and pores parts).
Cultivating Inner and Outer Silence
Until recently, the benefits of silence were limited to the absence of damage caused by noise. Recent research has shown that both inner and outer silence contribute to well-being.
Learning to Observe Thoughts
One of the foundations of inner peace for me is realizing that I am not my thoughts. In order to do that, though—and this is pretty much the core of everything I practice and write about—I had to learn to observe my thoughts, to recognize that the thoughts exist on...
My Word for 2017: Allow
I don't have any particular New Year's traditions any more. Through my 20s and 30s, I grew tired of resolutions, then commitments and goals—all things that ultimately made me feel bad about myself (usually within about six weeks). In my early 40s, I decided to focus...